Redemption's Kiss

I could see myself reflected in the golden elevator doors and I smirked at myself. Behind me, I could see the expensive marble floor, the impressive (if a little gauche) Corinthian columns, and the gilded trim that was stretched around the perimeter of the lobby. Everything, including me, had a slightly gold-metallic tinge from the reflection, giving everything the impression of being made of money. I really couldn't help but sneer at myself; I looked so perfect from that perspective; like I belonged.

What I mean by that is that I looked like money, like self-consciously ostentatious cash. I looked like the sort of vulgar power, elegance, and sophistication that this place was trying to cultivate. That the men who lived here wanted to associate themselves with. I was wearing my most expensive pair of black, five-inch stiletto heels that ran a couple of inches up my calves. Those calves were quite shapely (a favorite feature) and, while they looked bronze in the reflection of the elevator, were actually the sort of sophisticated pale white that I cultivated all over my body. Tans are nice for some people, I guess. But tans turns to wrinkles and can be uneven. Soft, creamy white skin lasts longer and has a timeless appeal. And it fit perfectly now, in the dead of a New York winter.

Above calves were several inches of exposed skin. Despite the cold, I was wearing a rather short (but by no means slutty) dress that fell a few inches above my thin knees. The dress itself was a simple, dark blue affair that hugged my figure like a second skin. To that end, it tapered out as it ran up my thighs and then flared widely at my hips. I could not see it, but I knew that my most commented-upon feature, my large, round, but toned, ass was rising like a helium balloon behind my back. From my hips, the dress narrowed down to my narrow waist. I spent a good deal of time keeping this particular feature fit and trim, making sure that the sudden contraction from my hips to my waist was particularly dramatic. From the narrowest part of my waist, the dress tapered back up to my chest.

This dress was selected, in part, because of the way in which it accentuated my breasts. It fit so tightly and held me up firmly. Further it had a low, swooping round neck. A couple of inches of cleavage were exposed from my C-cup breasts and the full round shape of them was clearly visible. Between my breasts was the large pendant of a gold necklace, some sort of precious stone polished to a perfect shine. My breasts were not quite as wide as my hips, giving me a slightly off-balanced hourglass look. My shoulders were covered by my coat (a thick, fur item that fit the false-elegant theme), but it was possible to see the short sleeves of the dress. I knew that deep in the sleeves of my coat were my narrow, delicate arms and long, thin fingers. There were expensive bracelets and rings and on my hand (not too many, just the right amount to be a little trashy).

Regardless, growing up out of the top of the dress was my long, elegant throat. My oval face was rested above that perch. I had a strong, but feminine chin sitting below thick, deep red lips. I knew that beneath those wide lips were perfectly straight, white teeth, but they weren't visible through my smirk. I had a small, slightly upturned pixie nose and wide, desperately gray eyes. My ears were quite small and large earrings hung from them. I knew that my face had a somewhat severe, icy beauty that made me look intelligent and intimidating. My hair was silky, full and impossibly black. It hung down loose halfway across my back and laid slightly across my eyes, giving me a mischievous air. The whole package was around 5'3 tall (not counting the heels) and a little over a hundred pounds (I'll never tell exactly how little).

I suppose that the only thing that threw off the vision was that, over my right shoulder and in the distance, I could see the doorman behind his small desk. He was looking at me, ill-concealed disgust on his face. It was roughly the same look that the driver who had picked me up and was waiting outside for me had provided when he opened the door and let me in. I guess they knew why I was there.

My beautifully maintained body split in half and I looked into the elevator. I looked briefly over my shoulder at the doorman. I slipped my long red tongue out from between my lips. I ran it along the thick length of my lips and winked at the doorman. He looked slightly flustered and turned away. But I didn't pay attention to what he did next. I turned back to the elevator and stepped inside.

Well, fuck the doorman. But he was right. He knew what I was doing here (had seen me here many times, in fact) and apparently didn't approve of it. That was fine by me. A callgirl can't afford thin skin. And at the age of 25, I was more than a veteran at this and barely even thought of the moral aspects of my work anymore.

Hell, I guess I've never really thought about the moral aspect of my work. I started this when I was 18 years old, fresh out of high school. I had absolutely no interest in college or the military or a job of any kind. My family never really gave two shits what I did. They had important lives (or so they thought) and didn't really have any time for me when I was growing up. They'd pissed away the money they'd inherited from my grandmother and weren't really interested in bankrolling me while I lived the same kind of pointless lives that they lived. But I knew I liked nice things, I wanted money, I was sexy and I liked fucking. Day after graduation, I put up an ad on Craiglist and the rest was history.

Some girls like to mythologize their first time, to build it up into some sort of terrible, horrible, wonderful event. I can remember talking to some of them. They'd cry. They'd describe every little detail. They would talk about the way it made them feel. It was like a made-for-TV movie. Lifetime: I was a Craigslist call girl. That wasn't my style. I had fucked before my first time getting paid. There were only two differences between normal sex and callgirl sex: I had to pretend it was good even when it was shit and I got paid. A little acting was well worth the paycheck. Guys would pay a premium for a young girl, right out of high school. I'd wear my brother's letter jacket when I gave a blowjob. Johns got a real kick out of it.

I didn't stay on Craiglist long. That was only a half-step up from being a junkie on the street in my opinion. I guess it was other girls who helped me out. You get numbers and contact information from a girl you got to know (in one way or another) when she couldn't work. You call or text a guy and say, "I am Mary's friend, she said we'd get along. How'd you like to go on a date?" He'd know what that meant and set something up. Eventually, I got together what I called my "stable." A collection of stalwart regulars who always paid, didn't hit, and I knew were clean (both in terms of disease and legal trouble). Sometimes a new guy would slip in for a date, but I relied on my regulars.

And date is the correct term, I truly believe that. I was young, I was good looking, and I created the illusion of class that sophisticated Johns wanted. Glamor, I guess would be the most accurate word. And the guys expected it to kind of be like a date. It wasn't like Craiglist stuff and it wasn't like what I heard about street girls. This wasn't some 15-minute thing where I didn't have to pretend that I cared, just let a guy lay into me. They paid enough to deserve my interest and my charm. I dressed up nice, I smiled broadly, I laughed at the jokes. For a lot of guys, this was the major appeal. Most of them weren't exactly good-looking guys (not that I cared, do you care if your boss is good-looking?) and they wanted people to look at me fawning over him and think "what is that guys deal? He must be rich or interesting or something." The fact that he got to fuck me, for some guys, was secondary. Though, I think they all liked that they could fuck me whenever they wanted to. The sureness of the sure thing with a hot young girl was more important than the thing, if you catch my meaning.

So it was a little bit of acting on my part, pretending like I was truly enamored with whatever guy I was with that night (or that part of the night, I sometimes had two or even three dates in a night). But the payoff was great. I don't just mean the money (though that was excellent). I got more out of it than that. No, not fulfillment, don't think that I am getting sentimental about this. I got gifts (Johns loved to give an expensive gift in public. More Johns thought they were Richard Gere than hookers thought they were Julia Roberts), I went to all of the best restaurants, the most exclusive clubs, I had the best drugs.

Although, on that last point, I always tried to be careful. Look, anyone who doesn't get out of the business eventually ends up a streetwalker. That is the nature of the business. If you suck dick until you're 50, no one wants to pay real money for you and if you want to keep doing it, you have to do it on the streets. Unless you got some gimmick. I understood that, I knew I couldn't do it forever. But I also knew that the fastest way to the bottom of the rung was drugs. Heroin was especially bad in the circles I ran in, but I knew from stories about girls with meth or crack problems too.

Certain girls aren't cut out for this business. They need to make themselves numb to do what they need to do. I get it. I needed to be numb too, but I was able to do it organically. To divorce myself from my feelings internally. Some girls needed heroin. I guess that meth made some girls super horny, into any kind of thing the John got into. That made it possible for them to keep working. I stayed away from that stuff, I knew that if you start doing drugs just so you can do your job, pretty soon you are doing your job just so you can get the drugs. So I never got too hard into anything. A little coke every once in a while, pills other times. Never enough to really form a habit. Though I admit, by 25 sometimes I need a little bump before I hit the circuit for the night. When I was walking into the elevator, I still had a little bit of a buzz going.

I guess I had been a little tired that night, before I had gotten myself all coifed and ready. I wasn't really thinking about it consciously, but I guess I knew I was getting a little long in the tooth for this life. At 25, most of the girls I came up with were out of the life, strung out, in jail, or dead. Not many girls kept their looks and their interest as long as I did.

Some of it, I guess, was that I didn't mind the job that much. I mean my 18-year-old thought that I liked fucking, so why not get paid for it had long since faded. I didn't really know if I liked fucking anymore. I didn't hate it for sure. But it was just a job. I didn't get involved in the whole morality thing. I never really gave a shit about whether I was doing something fulfilling. Most jobs aren't. But most jobs also pay shit. And I guess that was the real reason I was still doing this. The reason that I spent a lot of hours (and a lot of money) every week at gyms and salons and boutiques was because it was an investment in the business of my body. And that business was still paying out handsomely. I was a skilled worker, I demanded top-flight payment.

More for some Johns that for others. That was why, despite my fatigue, I had agreed to come here to this swanky apartment at the last minute. This was one of my regulars and he happened to pay exceptionally well. Mostly because, unlike most of the Johns who just thought they were into weird stuff ("can I get...a footjob") this guy really was into some freaky shit.

Despite that, I had almost been hoping he would call. I needed the money. I had been putting some cash aside since I first started and I had a pretty good war chest now. I lived frugally and I got men to buy my meals. But lately, I don't know, I had been spending a little more money than I intended on coke. On pills. I didn't really know why. I wasn't really thinking about it. Just one of those things, I guess. I hadn't dipped into the savings but I wasn't putting anything away. Tonight was a chance to ensure the coffers remained filled.

The elevator opened near the top floor (not the penthouse, my John wasn't that successful. Yet). As I stepped through the door in the short, overly-sumptuous hallway, I felt my head sort slip into the right place. It wasn't even a conscious thing anymore, I wasn't acting. I was just entering into the role. My shoes clicked a little more forcefully on the floor, my legs extended a little more suggestively, my hips swung like a pendulm side-to side as I walked. I arched my back slightly to push my breasts out high and thrust my ass back. My lips curled back slightly into a seductive hint of a smile as my shadowed eye-lids drooped slightly, giving me a bed-time look. I could hear my voice, but I could hear my throat relaxing, knew that my voice would come out in a rich, honeyed tone. I was the dream now, and I was ready to give my John what he wanted.

I made my way to his door. I reached up to knock and, as it always did, the door opened up before my knuckles could touch the white-painted wood. The door swung wide and the light from the apartment filtered out over me. I could feel his apartment, a few degrees warmer than hallway and almost hot by comparison to the frigid temperatures outside. I stepped inside like I owned the place.

"Good evening Skye," the familiar voice of my John said as I entered his home. I didn't even look at him, I knew right where he was standing and, with eyes closed, I turned and kissed his cheek. Then I spun around in front of him, throwing my arms backwards. I felt his hands reach up and grab my gaudy fur coat and slip it from my bare arms.

"Daniel, I am so happy you called. I was waiting at home, wondering if you would," I said, not exactly lying. Once my coat was off and hung on the peg behind the door, I turned and looked at my John.

Daniel was a middle-aged man with a wife and children out in the suburbs. He was balding, had a fleshy face with small eyes, a bit of a paunch, but somehow no ass. He was quite wealthy (though not as fabulously wealthy as he wished he was. Trust me, I hear about a lot of people's shattered dreams) and he owned an apartment in the city for nights when he had to "work late." I don't know if his wife bought that line or if she was just happy he was out of her hair and not clawing at her for a night. Anyone who saw him knew that he wasn't much to look at. Anyone who fucked him knew he was worthless in bed. But he always got the money into my coat pocket before I left. I never even bothered to check until I got home, I knew he would pay. And well.

"I am sure you were," he said, both pretending not to believe my line but also obviously tickled by it. I smiled at him and he reached up and handed me a glass of white wine. I hadn't even noticed he was carrying it. I giggled like a younger girl and took it.

"Oh! What a nice little surprise," I said, taking a deep sip, "Are you trying to get me drunk before we even go out?" I asked, "Daniel, are you trying to take advantage of me?" I asked. He laughed at my little joke and began to walk down the hallway toward his living room.

"Nothing of the sort Skye, I know the kind of girl you are," he said, "I was just thinking that a change of pace might be nice for tonight." As I started to follow Daniel down the hallway I noticed for the first time that Daniel was by no means dressed to go out. He was wearing a robe and nothing more, from what I could tell. I was quite surprised.

My regulars (and there were a considerable number of them at that time) were my regulars, in part, because they had routines. I knew what they all liked. Some guys wanted me to come in and beg them to fuck me, only to have them take me out all night and "tease" me before taking me home. Some guys wanted me to play hard to get...Every. Single. Time. So that they could enjoy the conquest. One guy like to run me a bath and wash my hair while another liked to shave my pussy (he was quite good at it, saved me a good deal of money on grooming).

Daniel was very simple. He liked, what I called (to myself if no one else) the "Dream Date" package where we went out for a nice dinner, chatted in a witty sort of way, started up in the cab on the way home, and had sex on the floor of his apartment. This is what he had always done, since my first time with him five years earlier. The actual sex would be different (whatever kink he had on his mind that night) but the dance to get there was always the same.

"Did you want to stay in tonight baby?" I asked, making sure my voice sounded like I was totally up for whatever he wanted. I never tried to make a John feel like I was judging him about anything. First of all, it was bad for business. Second of all, how could I?

"In a manner of speaking," he said cryptically. He made his way through the small hallway near the door and then turned left at the end, entering the open floor-plan kitchen that overlooked the living room and dining room area. I quickly followed after him, wondering what he was thinking. It always made me nervous when a John acted "different." Sometimes it meant things would get violent. My mace was in my coat pocket, I trusted Daniel so I had left it by the door.

"Just tell me what you want honey. I am open to whatever you wa..." I said, but the 'pliable partner' routine that Daniel loved so much died on my lips as I stepped into the kitchen. Standing on the expensive tile floor, bent over against the counter with elbows on the table and ass sticking out, was a third party unknown to me. And not just any third party. It was a hooker.

As should be clear, I am not a hooker. I don't walk the streets and I don't give blowjobs in alleys (for less than $500.00). But I was in the same business generally and I could smell a streetwalker a mile away. This girl (and she was definitely 18-years old) was a streetwalker.

That is not to say that she looked burnt out or high or battered or anything else. I mean, those were common streetwalker afflictions, but she didn't have that problem. In fact, she looked remarkably fresh-faced. But I could tell anyway. Part of it, of course, was the uniform. The girl was around 5'1 and probably 105 pounds. She was wearing knee-high, red patent leather boots that clung tightly to her taut thighs. The heels of the boots were so high and her feet so small that porn star platforms were required. Her thighs were thin and toned, I was sure she had that thigh gap everyone was raving about for a while. Her skin was about as pale as mine, but it was hard to see her because of her black fishnet stockings running down into her boots. Her ass was, as I said, sticking back out away from the kitchen counter. It was squeezed into an exceptionally tight red skirt. It looked almost as full and round as mine. There was a gap in her clothing above her wide hips and I could see the way her body narrowed down to her waist. She had a flat stomach with a sparkly bellybutton ring. She was wearing a black halter top that looked more like a bandana wrapped around her large, incredibly perky breasts. Perhaps she had not warmed up from being outside, because her hardened nipples were easily visible through the flimsy material. She had long, thin arms and small hands. She had a very delicate neck and narrow shoulders.

Her face...was shockingly beautiful for a street walker. She had a small, but well-proportioned chin, a plump (but somewhat narrow) mouth painted a deep pink color. She had a narrow, somewhat long nose with a small cubic zirconia stud in it. Most strikingly she had massive blue eyes that screamed innocence and allure at the same time. Perfect hooker eyes. Her hair was a somewhat messy tumble of long blonde locks. The messy look worked for her though, making her looking seductive rather than disheveled.