“A business friend. He said she sucked like a Hoover.”

“How attractive.” When he opened his mouth to reply, she snapped the whip in the air in front of him with practiced exacting grace. “I didn’t ask you a question, little man.”

“No ma’am,” he said. He was sweating freely now, though the room was actually quite cool. Ming crossed one black-booted leg over the other and shook her hair back from her face in a black wave. It whispered like ghosts near her ears.

“Paolo,” she called. The door slid open, and Paolo’s large shadow loomed. “I can’t quite decide about our friend here. What do you think?”

“Maybe you should whip him,” Paolo suggested. His voice reminded her of glass grinding underfoot. “I’ll chain him, if you want.”

“No, not quite yet. Perhaps later.” She stared at the client’s eyes, watching the fear. She inclined her head to allow Paolo to leave. The door grated shut. “More than you expected, Ed? A little more … serious than you imagined?”

“I like it,” he said raggedly. She shrugged.

“I don’t care, as you know, whether you like it or not, as long as you pay.” She snaked the whip out over the wood floor, watching it writhe like a live thing. “Would you like to fuck me, Ed?”

“I thought maybe you’d bring me the other one.”

“Velvet?” Ming’s smile felt tight on her lips. “Some other time, perhaps. Once I’ve broken you in properly.”

He doesn’t want to be here. The thought came to her suddenly, like a whisper, and she stiffened. Something’s wrong.

But Paolo was in the next room; surely this little rabbit-chinned businessman couldn’t be a danger, not to her. No strength in those eyes, only a blind panic.

Panic can hill.

To still the doubts, Ming quick-snapped the whip, three, four times, each snap closer to the client’s chest. He pressed back into his wooden chair, actually balancing it on two legs in his haste to get away.

When she stopped, the chair thumped back down and he gulped in a deep breath.

“I think I’ve made a mistake,” he said, and stood up. Ming flicked her wrist, and the whip made a lazy sinuous circle on the floor at his feet.

“Do you want to fuck me, Ed?”

His Adam’s apple disappeared beneath the pressed white collar, bobbed up again convulsively like a drowning victim clawing for the surface. His face was white, flushed with red around the ears.

“Yes,” he said.

He was lying. Ming stood up and carefully coiled the whip. She left it in the seat of her chair and walked over to where he stood.

He didn’t move as she unzipped the crisply pressed trousers, teased his cock out, and persuaded it to stiffen in her hand.