She finds her first customer

The minutes stretched. Bree stood inside the weak yellow circle of the streetlamp, high heels already beginning to bite, the black bandage dress riding higher every time a night breeze moved past her bare thighs. The scarlet necklace rested warm against her collarbone, a steady, encouraging pulse that kept the worst of the fear from turning into flight. Still, her stomach fluttered with every set of approaching headlights. She was a surgeon standing on a cracked sidewalk in a neighborhood that had nothing to do with operating rooms, wearing almost nothing, waiting to sell what used to be private.

A figure detached itself from the deeper shadows near the liquor store and started toward her. Middle-aged, maybe fifty, soft through the middle in the way of a man who had stopped fighting gravity years ago. Faded jeans that sagged slightly at the seat, a dark polo shirt stretched over a modest gut, thinning hair combed forward in a losing battle. He walked with a slight shuffle, hands in his pockets, eyes already fixed on her with an intensity that made her pulse jump.

He stopped a few feet away, close enough that she could smell faint aftershave and cigarette smoke. His gaze traveled over her deliberately—platinum hair, the plunging neckline of the dress, the way the fabric clung to her hips and stopped just short of indecency, the ridiculous height of the stilettos, the bare legs, the scarlet necklace that somehow looked both expensive and out of place.

“You’re not from around here,” he said. His voice was ordinary, a little rough. “You don’t look like the other girls.”

Bree’s mouth felt dry. The necklace sent a slow roll of heat through her lower belly, steadying her enough to answer.

“How much for a fuck?” he asked, blunt and practical, the same way the man last night had approached the woman in pink.

The question landed like a slap and a caress at the same time. She was still Dr. Bree Michelles somewhere underneath the dress and the heels, yet the curse had already rewritten the script. She heard herself speak before the professional part of her mind could intervene.

“Fifty.”

The number came out softer than she intended, almost hesitant. Fifty dollars. A board-certified surgeon pricing a full fuck at the cost of a mediocre dinner. The demeaning arithmetic made her cunt clench even as nervousness fluttered hard behind her ribs.

The man’s eyebrows rose. Interest sharpened in his eyes. He looked her over again, slower this time, clearly weighing the discrepancy between her appearance and the price. Most of the women on these corners asked for less, or so she imagined. She looked too clean, too expensive, too much like someone who had taken a very wrong turn. That only seemed to heighten his interest.

“Fifty,” he repeated, almost testing the word. “For everything?”

Bree nodded once, not trusting her voice. The scarlet necklace throbbed in quiet approval.

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small fold of bills. He counted two twenties and a ten under the streetlamp, the paper soft and worn, then held them out. Bree’s fingers trembled as she took the money. The bills felt warm from his body heat. She curled them into her palm and, after a second’s hesitation, slipped them into the front of her dress, tucking them against the underside of her breast the way she had watched the woman do the night before. The intimacy of the gesture made her cheeks burn.

“Alley’s fine,” he said, tipping his chin toward the narrow gap between the vacant lot’s chain-link fence and the side of a shuttered building. The same kind of alley she had watched from her car. Dark, littered, private enough.

Bree’s heart slammed against her ribs. Nervousness and a low, shameful excitement tangled so tightly she could no longer separate them. She turned and started walking, the five-inch heels clicking unsteadily on the broken pavement. The dress rode up with every step; she could feel cool air on the lower curves of her ass and the thin string of the thong. The man followed close behind, close enough that she imagined she could feel the heat of him.

They reached the mouth of the alley. The streetlamp’s light died within a few feet. Deeper in, the darkness smelled of damp concrete, old garbage, and urine. A dumpster sat halfway down, its metal side scarred and tagged. Bree stepped past it, the stilettos precarious on the uneven ground. She stopped when the shadows felt thick enough, turned, and faced him.

Up close he looked even more ordinary—soft jaw, tired eyes, the mild surprise of a man who still could not quite believe what he was about to get for fifty dollars. His gaze kept dropping to her body, lingering on the way the dress clung, on the scarlet necklace, on the expensive lines of a face that did not belong in this alley.

Bree’s hands were shaking. She could feel the folded bills pressed against her breast with every breath. The necklace pulsed hotter, feeding her the same images that had made her come the night before: knees on filthy concrete, mediocre cock, the quiet degradation of being used for pocket change by a stranger who would never know her real name. Only now the price was fifty and the act would be more than a blowjob. A full fuck. Her body, the same body that had stood for hours in an OR, about to be bent over or pressed against a brick wall for the cost of a cheap bottle of whiskey.

Nervousness kept her voice locked in her throat. Excitement—hot, unwilling, necklace-fed—kept her from running. She stood there in the short dress and the impossible heels, thong already damp, scarlet necklace gleaming faintly in the dark, waiting for the dumpy fifty-year-old man who had just paid her to begin.

He took a step closer. The alley seemed to narrow around them. Bree’s pulse thundered in her ears. The night had officially started.