Evelyn selects the Courtesan's Surprise

“It’s Fiona’s birthday,” Lady Evelyn explained. “And I want to give her a present.”

“How nice!” said Mei, standing behind the counter of the highly exclusive Hong Kong brothel. The exquisitely lovely slender Chinese girl, in her clinging red cheongsam with its sides split all the way up to the hip, clapped her hands in glee. More lovely Chinese girls peeped out from behind the silk curtains of the parlour, whispering and giggling to each other. “As you know, we specialise in birthday presents.”

“Yes, that’s why I’m here. Now, I’ve been recommended a particular item from your menu. Number 69?”

“Ah, yes,” said Mei. “The Courtesan’s Surprise. Inspired by an ancient Chinese folktale about a monkey stealing women’s clothing while they bathed in a hot spring. One of our most popular numbers. I assume your friend enjoys being sexually humiliated?”

“Very much so,” said Evelyn, patting Fiona’s bottom. The buxom blonde had passed an uncomfortable evening, performing forfeit after forfeit in the nude before the chuckling casino, convinced with each new round that her luck was about to change. She’d danced, sung bawdy ballads, fetched drinks, performed calisthenics, sat on strangers’ laps and even permitted Lady Evelyn to ride her around the room like a pony. Now, as a result of one reckless final decision to go all in, she was gagged, leashed, bound at wrist and ankle and compelled to go wherever Evelyn chose to drag her. “As you can see.”

“MMPH!”

“That’s just her cute little way of saying she agrees. Anyway, for her birthday, I’ve decided to book her in for an indefinite stay. You can do that, can’t you? Keep her here, maybe in an upstairs room, maybe tied up, while you spend sixteen hours a day inflicting all the cruelest and most devious torments your wicked Oriental minds can devise on her trembling flesh?”

“Easily. We’ve got half a dozen customers like that already.”

“Oh, that’s nice. You could make them have sex with each other!”

“Duh. Obviously, we thought of that. There’s a theatre out back where we make all the Courtesan’s Surprise clients do a lesbian sex show in front of hundreds of paying customers. And of course there’ll be hours of tickle ****, and jade nipple clamps, and special skin-tingling unguents, and orgasm denial with cunningly designed vibrating ivory beads, and all that kind of thing. Now, is there a chance that when we ungag your friend, she’ll say it’s not really her birthday and you brought her here as a practical joke?”

“It’s almost certain. That’s part of the fantasy for her.”

“Might she try to escape?”

“It’s very possible.”

“Got it,” said Mei, making a note in a small leatherbound diary. “Oh, one other small thing. You were recommended to us by Lady Ashcroft, correct?”

“That’s right. Old school friend.”

“Well, it says here, and I’m quoting directly, that if that bitch Evelyn ever shows her face with a tied-up girl in tow and asks you to give her the Courtesan’s Surprise, she secretly means that you should let the tied-up girl go and give Evelyn the Courtesan’s Surprise instead. Oh, and you should give the girl some clothes to wear and let her help you punish Evelyn for as long as she likes. That’ll pay the bitch back for the prank she pulled on me during the school production of Romeo And Fifteen Juliets.”

“I see,” said Evelyn, slowly backing away, as twenty or thirty beautiful Chinese girls with tinkling laughs and wicked eyes emerged from dozens of hidden panels around the room, wearing cheongsams and holding ropes. “I’m afraid there’s been a bit of a mix-up. I’ll be going now.”

“No you won’t,” said Mei, as the giggling Chinese girls bore Evelyn to the ground.