Working Girl

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.

Our eyes met but my wife quickly glanced away. "It's the only option so far - that is unless you have found somewhere else for us to go today."

I shook my head unhappily. "Everywhere I saw was really terrible."

"Well I certainly don't want to take Tom to some bug infested hovel. Even if we go to the council, I will be put in emergency accommodation, crammed in with other mothers and kids and you'll finish up in some kind of hostel being molested by dirty old men. That's why I don't want to leave this flat if I can possibly help it."

"But you're my wife. I love you and you love me, how can you possibly consider it," I protested.

"Jake it's only sex. If you were my first it might be different but you know that I had one or two partners before we met. I can do it if it is the only way to stay here. We have both got to pretend that it doesn't matter at all."

The smarmy face of the rent collector hovered in front of my eyes. "But with him - he's horrible."

"At least he'll be clean - you can tell by his manicured fingers that he's pretty fastidious."

"You really are serious aren't you?"

"Jake, I honestly don't think I have got any choice, whether I want to or not," Joni said firmly, meeting my eyes head on for the first time.

I started to nod in reluctant acquiescence but then in a burst of childish petulance I shouted, "But what the fuck am I supposed to do while he's screwing you - stand by the door holding his bloody coat?"

"Don't be silly - you can take Tom in the park for an hour. I shouldn't take longer than that and I'm hoping it will be a damn sight shorter."

"He just said that that you had to 'be nice' to him so he might be satisfied with just a blow-job," I suggested, looking for the slightest glimmer of hope."

"I hope that he does want to fuck me," my wife said bluntly, " - if I have to suck him off then I have got to think about what I'm doing but with a shag I can just lie there and let him get on with it.

I slumped at the realisation that it was really going to happen, dipping my head to hide the tears that had come unbidden to my eyes. In a flash, Joni was round the table and holding my head firmly against her soft breasts. "It won't make any difference to us," she consoled, "If we both consider the alternative I think we can get through this unscathed."

Tom deciding to cry at that moment broke up the discussion and we did not mention the subject again. We had the television on while she took care of our son and soon after he went down we also retired to bed. I felt completely drained with sex the last thing on my mind. Joni lay stiffly by my side and I can imagine that she was equally pensive. After a few minutes a glanced at the bedside clock and this triggered the thought that within twenty-four hours my lovely wife would be lying in the same position but with another man between her legs. In an instant my prick was rigid and as hard as iron. Frantically I rolled on top of her stabbing ineffectually in the urgency to get inside her. Joni helped me in then clung to me wrapping her legs tightly round me. Our love-making session was neither tender nor of long duration. On the contrary it was both explosive and quick but it did the trick because we both fell asleep in each others arms, still joined.

The next day we went through the motions of normal life but both Joni and I were very quiet and as if by unspoken agreement, neither of us made any reference to how the afternoon would end. I know that I had great difficulty sitting still and I also made inroads into my small supply of roll-up tobacco. At 3.45 p.m. Joni said brightly, "It's a lovely day outside - why don't you take Tom for a nice walk in the park."

I shot out of my chair as if jerked by a piece of string. It was the moment that I had been dreading all day. I left with only a casual kiss - why should I make a fuss. I was simply taking my son out leaving my wife to get on with her housework and when I got back, like most husbands, I would not be able to tell what she had done. It was a good defence ploy in theory but the moment that I was seated in the park, it all fell to pieces. I sat looking at my watch until it got to four o'clock - 'He will be knocking at the door now. Joni will open it but will she smile or simply let him to in?' It was easy to imagine the smug complacent look on the bastard's face and the mental picture forced my guts into a spasm of cramp.

When I reckoned that they would be going into the bedroom I felt physically sick and ran to lean over a rubbish bin, but although I suffered a bit of retching, nothing came up. And so it went on with me painfully imagining every moment of my wife's seduction. I have graphically mentioned my mental distress but despite this my feckless penis kept doing a good impersonation of an iron poker and this fact filled me with a profound feeling of shame to add to my other woes. Tom did not get his walk, (I honestly think that for a time my legs were incapable of movement), and although my baby boy grizzled a bit, he left me alone with my thoughts for the full hour.

The instant that my watch showed five o'clock, I heaved a long sight and stood up - at least it was all over by now. Tom gazed up at me and I managed to give him a weak smile. I had actually taken a few steps towards to park exit when I realised that the rent collector might not have left immediately - he was the kind of swine to prolong matter by making unnecessary conversation just to gloat over his conquest. Somehow I had managed to convince myself that if I did not see the man, nothing had happened - so I turned instead towards the small lake. Tom loves the ducks. "Du, Du, Du," he would say - or that's what we believed he said. Now as usual he started bouncing excitedly up and down - during that long hour he must have sat there wondering what the delay was. It was just over fifteen minutes before the small child lost interest and once again I turned towards home only to be stopped by another thought - what the hell could I say when I entered the flat? Should it be some mundane remark like, "I forgot to take crumbs for the ducks" or possibly the polite query "How was it?"

My gut reaction questions were, "Did he fuck your brains out?" and "DID YOU ENJOY IT?" but those were answers that Joni would only answer in her own time. It was another quarter of an hour before I decided to simply walk in, hold her and wait for her to tell me as much as she wanted.

It was almost twenty to six before I arrived at the garden gate, only to find the rent collector walking down the path towards me. He gave me an expansive smile together with a mock salute and congratulated, "Cracking little wife you've got there squire - you're a very lucky man." At that moment I felt anything but a lucky man.

I was trembling when I entered the flat. The encounter had completely distracted my intention to look at my wife's face to see if there was any change. She was not in the room anyway. I had taken one step into the bedroom to check there when I heard the sound of the shower - this was in what was historically a large cupboard at the end of the kitchen alcove. However, it was not knowledge of Joni's whereabouts that caused me to step quickly backwards. The bedroom curtains were drawn, the duvet was in a pile on the floor at the bottom of the bed and the whole room reeked of sex. The finishing touch was the large wet patch in the middle of the sheet. I pulled the door quickly closed just as my wife emerged from the kitchen, completely naked and busily tying a towel round her hair. "Don't go in there for a minute or two - I want to get some clothes on first. Why don't you put the kettle on love, I'm absolutely parched," she said cheerfully.

I got Tom out of the pram and got him playing on the floor and then did as instructed. Joni was over ten minutes before she returned and even then had only flung on jeans and an old sweater. She gave me a big smile and said, "I meant to bring a nappy out, grab me one love while I take his dirty one off - after I get Tom settled we can sit down and talk. With no option, I steeled my self and went into the bedroom, to be amazed at the instant transformation - Sunlight streamed in through the wide open window, the bed was made and the air smelt of springtime. Curiosity caused me to look under the duvet, and sure enough I found a crisp clean sheet.

As if knowing what was required of him, Tom went to sleep the moment the moment he was put down. Joni grabbed her mug, walked over as if to join me on the settee, hesitated a moment then sat instead in an armchair facing me. "I bumped into him outside - he certainly kept you chatting for a long time afterwards," I told her, mainly for something to say.