That being said...I’m free tomorrow night.

THE CASE OF THE BROKENHEARTED BARTENDER

Tiffany Reisz

The Mistress Files #5

The Case of the Brokenhearted Bartender

By Nora Sutherlin

I’ll admit, this client was a weird one. Not her, she wasn’t weird. The job was weird. Never done that sort of thing before, and I’m fairly certain I’ll never do again. Not because I don’t want to, as I rather enjoyed it, but because my client was something of a one-of-a-kind despite her unofficial job title.

Very few of my clients are women. Perhaps only one percent of them are women who come to me alone. I see a few more with couples, but single women can usually get the kink they need at play parties without having to pay for it. This particular woman, however, was a special case. I only saw her in my dungeon once. I’ll never see her in my dungeon again.

After all, this client wasn’t kinky. And yet, she still needed me.

Name: Chris McKay.

Age: 23.

Occupation: Head bartender at the Möbius Strip Club, i.e. “The New Sam.”

Orientation: Lesbian (the sexy-cute androgynous kind that looks like a fourteen-year-old boy. I’m sure there’s an actual term for that but I left my LGBT dictionary at home).

When you have a sexual problem in New York City, and you don’t know who to ask for help, you go to Kingsley Edge. He might not know the answer but he knows someone who does. In this case, he knew me.

* * *

The Mistress headed to her dungeon and found her client waiting outside the door. The client wasn’t alone, however. She had a man with her—a handsome man wearing a grey suit, vaguely Regency-era, and black riding boots. The client and the man spoke in hushed tones back and forth to each other. It seemed the man was trying to comfort the woman or give her some words of encouragement. As The Mistress strode down the hall toward them, she studied her new client, Chris. The young woman wore skinny jeans, a white T-shirt, a black leather jacket and battered black boots, and her sexy short black hair had been artfully coiffed. From a distance, she looked a lot like a teenage boy circa 1956. Up close she looked like a stunningly beautiful woman who did everything she could in her power to look like a teenage boy circa 1956.

“So this is the New Sam?” The Mistress asked as she unlocked her dungeon door.

“She is indeed,” Kingsley, the man in the riding boots said with pride.

Chris rolled her eyes. Apparently this was a conversation she’d heard once too often.

“I’m Chris.”

“Very nice to beat you.” The Mistress shook Chris’s hand.

“Beat me? I didn’t think...” Chris began.

“She’s joking.” Kingsley put his arm around Chris’s shoulder like a protective older brother and ushered her into the first room of the dungeon. “It’s her line. It’s an old line, and she should get some new lines.”