“Women always think that, and they’re always wrong,” he said. He removed his hand from my arm, and reached up to touch my wig, tugging gently at one of the curls. “Take this off.”

I hesitated. I didn’t want to. The costume helped to keep Sassy separate from the real me. Without the wig on, I was just myself, ordinary Sasha, and I didn’t let the clients touch Sasha. Not a single one of them had ever seen me without the wig.

But the man in the suit had already seen me without it. It was too late to protect Sasha from him.

And maybe I didn’t want to.

I reached up and carefully removed the wig, sliding out the pins I used to hold it in place, and tossed it on a nearby chair. It would crumple like that, fall out of shape, and maybe be ruined.

Whatever. I had a spare.

I untied my real hair from the tight knot I had wrapped it into, letting it settle around my shoulders in thick brown waves.

“Much better,” he said. He tucked one strand behind my ear. “You don’t make a particularly convincing blond.”

Nobody had ever complained, but I wasn’t about to say that. Rule 6: don’t talk to your clients about your other clients. Everyone should think he’s the only man in your life.

I didn’t want to talk to him about my clients, or about my hair. Time to change the subject. “I don’t know your name,” I said.

“Do you need to?” he asked. He moved his hands to my waist and began working apart the knot in the belt of my robe.

I pulled away from him then. Things were moving too quickly. I needed a moment to get my bearings. I crossed the room to the bed and perched on the mattress, feeling it sink comfortingly beneath my weight. “I have to call you something,” I said.

“Sir,” he said, turning to face me.

I thought about it, calling him sir as he touched me, and felt an expected heat between my legs. I shifted awkwardly, unsettled by my response to him. I wasn’t in control of my body anymore, and I didn’t like it. With clients, I was always, absolutely, perfectly in control. Nothing they did affected me.

Everything this man did affected me.

“If you won’t tell me your name, I’ll have to come up with one for you,” I said. Screw rule 6. “One of my clients, I call him Sasquatch, because he’s very hairy. Another one is Lance Armstrong, because he cycles. And you—”

“Spare me the indignity,” he said. “You can call me Mr. Turner.”

“That can’t be your real name,” I said, echoing his words from earlier, “but I won’t press the matter.”

He laughed, and this time it sounded genuine. “It isn’t. You don’t need to know my real name.”

“That’s fine,” I said, and leaned back on one hand, lowering my eyelids seductively and arching my chest toward him. “We won’t be doing too much talking, anyway.”

He crossed his arms and gave me a skeptical look, one eyebrow raised. “Do you think you’re going to be in charge here, little girl?”

“I always am,” I said, sliding my free hand down to tug open the neck of my robe, just a little bit, just enough to give him a peek at my cleavage.

He moved so quickly that I didn’t have time to react. He crossed the room in two long strides and slung himself on top of me, his weight bearing me down into the mattress, and he captured my wrists in both hands and drew my arms above my head. He leaned down so that our faces were only inches apart, and said, “Sweetheart, you aren’t in charge anymore.”

I drew in a deep breath, fighting my first instinct, which was to panic. He was huge and heavy on top of me, and even if I fought, I wouldn’t be able to get away.

And I wasn’t sure I wanted to, anyway.

Men touched me. They did it all the time, and I was used to it. None of it meant anything to me. They sucked on my nipples, and I moaned theatrically and pretended that I couldn’t get enough, that I was desperate for more. It was all acting. It was like brushing my teeth, or painting my toenails: not unpleasant, but routine, mechanical.

But now, with “Mr. Turner” on top of me, I suddenly felt alive again.

Snap out of it, I told myself sternly. He was still a client. I still had a job to do. I stretched beneath him as much as I could, arching my back slightly, pressing myself against the length of his body. “What are you going to do with me, sir?” I purred.

“Everything,” he said, and it was both a promise and a threat.

The heat between my legs intensified.

He pushed himself onto his elbows. One hand stayed clamped around my wrists, and the other untied the knot at my waist and opened my robe, spreading the silky panels onto the mattress and exposing my bare body to the air. He gave me a long, slow once-over, appraising my body like I was a race-horse he was thinking about buying. He slid his free hand from my shoulder to my hip, and my skin prickled in its wake.

I closed my eyes.

“You sweet thing,” he said. “Are you embarrassed? You don’t have any reason to be. Your tits are gorgeous, and I imagine your cunt has similar charms.”

His crude words should have annoyed me, but instead they increased my arousal. I was an object, a warm body that he would use for his pleasure, and it should have made me angry. I was a person. This was my job, not my purpose in life. I didn’t exist to satisfy any man’s sexual appetites.

But I wanted to satisfy his.

I was learning so many new and delightful things about myself.

Heavy sarcasm on the delightful.

“You could take a look at it and find out,” I heard myself say, lush and melting, the perfect whore, the perfect bedmate. Only this time I meant it.

“Mm, warm and willing,” he said. “How much of that is simply for show? I’ll have you dripping wet and begging for me.” His hand moved from my hip to my breasts, sliding across them like he was taking stock of his territory, and then he pinched one of my nipples so hard that I yelped and jolted beneath him.

“That hurt,” I said.

“I’m sure it did,” he said. “I think you liked it.” He bent his head and put his mouth to the same nipple he had just pinched, and flicked his tongue across it, teasing it into full hardness. He switched to my other breast and gave that nipple the same treatment, moving back and forth until I was shivering and cradling his head in my hands, wanting more, wanting everything, and unwilling to ask for it.