Playing with Fire | Yuzuru Hanyu

21. Turning Point

It turned out that taking a new client had been a very big mistake. One that she would only truly realize at the beginning of their appointment.

By now, Aria was used to a lot of things when it came to the male species and most of them were far from positive.

She had the opportunity to meet some really nice guys through this job but the reality was that most of them were nothing of sorts.

Let's just say that sweet and nice guys don't go for escorts, they stay with their wives and kids instead of constantly cheating on their backs.

Even through the majority of idiots that she had encountered, none of them had ever reached too far.

Aria had heard the stories of some girls being beaten up, she had heard some recalls of truly sick encounters but thankfully, she had never experienced something too extreme to handle.

Well, until then.

The whole appointment seemed doomed from the start when the client kept changing the time of the meeting. 

Had this been any other time, Aria would've canceled and moved on but given that her schedule was mostly free, she dutifully agreed on changing it over and over again.

There was something that she had learned in her short career in the business and it was that whenever guys wanted to meet in the club, the whole thing was a bad idea from the start.

When the guy almost begged for them to meet in one of Toronto's busiest clubs, her first instinct had been to once again cancel the whole thing but given that it was a whole night booking, the money was too good to refuse that easily. If anything got too bad, she could always stop the appointment there.

Like the usual routine, Aria got dressed according to the plans, doing her best to cover up despite the obvious setting that the man had chosen. The V neckline on her top showed a seducing amount of cleavage and the skirt was just over her knee, covering most of her thighs. The heels on her feet were high enough to be convincing without being too uncomfortable.

Not that there was any type of heel that was nice to wear...

Arriving at the club, Aria was instantly reminded of how much she hated those places. The music was terrible, the men were creeps and the women had probably slept with more guys casually than she had in her professional escort career.

Enduring all of the pain, she moved to the agreed location, the VIP lounge, only to be immediately greeted by a man old enough to be her grandfather.

"Aurora, yes?" the accent on his voice told her he was probably of Russian descent and Aria knew exactly what that meant for her.

Trouble.

"Yes." she said, trying her best not to show the fear lingering in her body. Russian men weren't necessarily known for being nice to women, especially not in her line of business.

"We will have lots of fun tonight."

She was completely disgusted from the very beginning but then again, hearing men say those things to her was pretty much her job. There was just something about the way he said it that brought shivers into her whole body and not the nice kind.

He made her dance, grinding against her body and touching her in ways that would only be accepted in public in a place like this. 

Nothing of it was enticing, none of it made her body on fire.

Aria had long accepted that nothing would feel as good as it had with the skater but at the same time, she never expected to feel disgusted with another man.

To be fair, this one was making it very easy to hate him.

"Come on, slut, move against me."

It took plenty of self-control to avoid lashing out at the idiot that hired her and the one thing making sure she didn't say exactly everything that was on her mind was the pure fact that she knew how good the money was and nothing that paid that well came without sacrifices.

For her, it was fine when the insults came in the form of words and touches, Aria knew that her mental strength was more than enough to handle all of it.

Only when things went physical did she start regretting her choices.

While they were at the club, the man was somewhat decent. Touching and degrading her in ways that she had never heard before but it wasn't too bad when there were other people around.

It was only when he took her to the hotel room that things started gradually getting worse.

By then, he had called her slut more times and in more ways than she could count. For sure, she had to give it to him, he had creativity when it came to insults.

As badly treated as she sometimes was, there was a reason why Aria had only ever worked in high-class services. There were stricter rules in place and usually, those together with the price fee were more than enough to protect the girls.

The problem came when the crazy men had money as well and managed to hire them thinking they were like any other girl they could pick up from the street.

There was a difference purely for the fact that they were, in theory, more protected by the company that offered the service.

When the girls were with the clients, however, there was very little that could be done and Aria would learn that in the most painful of ways.

The events of that evening would forever be engraved in her mind. From the way he handled her body to the way he spoke to her, nothing seemed to be human about the man. He had no remorse, no pity, no humanity.

To say that this man treated her below animal level wouldn't even cover the traumatic events of that night and the mere thought that she was supposed to stay by that man's side until the morning brought shivers to her body. 

In the time that she worked for the company, there had never been a single time where she felt the need to call for an early extraction but staying in that hotel room was too dangerous to even contemplate. Aria didn't even care if she wasn't paid, all she wanted was to get the hell out of there and into the safety of her home.

It was in tears that she made the call, being instructed to get out of the hotel room as soon as the person on the other side heard her report of what had happened.

Mere seconds after the man left her to have a shower, Aria was running out of the door covered merely by her trenchcoat. There was no way that she would risk her safety merely to put some more clothes on her body.

The driver seemed to take ages to arrive and the only consolation she had was that the street was more crowded than she expected. Even if he did find her a few streets away from the hotel, the likelihood of trying anything in a crowded space was smaller. There she was, in the middle of the street crying her eyes out and feeling completely defenseless and vulnerable.

When the car eventually arrived, relief filled her. 

She was safe but nothing would ever be the same.