Chapter One

 

I woke to the soft but rising melody of Bach playing from the speakers on either side of the bed. The music was coming from my iPhone through the home Wi-Fi setup. It woke me up slowly and I sighed as the alarm app on the phone slowly brought up the hidden lighting in my bedroom.

I rolled onto my back, then reached over for the big feather pillow on the other side of the King-sized bed and yanked it over to place it on the one which had already been under my head, propping me up more. The phone was sitting on its wireless charger base on the table and I grabbed it, then used the app on it to raise the blind on my windows.

I yawned hugely, arching my back and throwing my arms up and out, then dropping my back onto the bed again. I grabbed the remote and turned on the TV - tuned to the BBC's international edition, and then did a few slow stretching exercises preparatory to getting out of my lovely bed.

I have always slept in the nude since I don't like the feeling of clothes being bunched up under the sheets, as it does when I move. Anyway, my sheets are bamboo. They're expensive but deliciously soft against my bare skin.

The blinds rolled obediently up, letting the morning light into the room, giving it a deep, rosy glow. I sat up in bed, pushing back the covers, and felt a small sense of satisfaction at how clean and tidy the room was. Everything was in its place. It was a very, very neat room.

Which was the way I liked it. The way I like everything, in fact.

It was a very nice room, a large room, with a high ceiling. I'd replaced the paintings on the walls with neat canvas prints of artists and scenes I found to be particularly soothing and restful.

I swung my legs out of bed and stood beside it a moment before going to the window. It was a large window, in keeping with the large room and in keeping with how modern the building was. My window looked out on some lower buildings and then the harbor. My building was right downtown.

Standing naked in a large window which descended to my knees didn't worry me. There were no other buildings near enough or high enough for anyone to see. Still, it gave me just a little sense of being adventurous, of being daring, of being... I don't know, brazen!

Which, of course, I am not. I am careful. I am responsible. I plan things. I don't do things on impulse. I could feel brazen standing naked in a large plate glass window with the sun shining on my body, with my breasts practically touching the glass. But only because I had long since weighed the odds of anyone being able to see me and found them vanishingly small.

I turned and walked forward. The TV was in the corner and I did some more slow stretches while watching. Then I grabbed my phone and headed for the bathroom. It shone. Which pleased some part of me. The tiles were very shiny, especially when you kept them really clean, as the cleaning staff did. The glass on the shower cabinet looked new. The faucets glistened. The mirror was unmarred.

I appreciated all of this as I examined myself in the mirror, then turned on the fan before turning on the shower. I gave it a half minute for the water temperature to settle, then stepped in to prepare for the day. As I washed my hair and showered my mind ran through the day's task-list.

I had a well-ordered life and intended to keep it that way. And I couldn't if I fell behind in things. Never put off till tomorrow what should be done today, I say.

I work at a bank. And it's a very formal atmosphere. I put on a black dress with the hem a few inches above the knees. The only ornament was a square cut silver chain... almost a choker, around my neck, and a matching bracelet. I also wore large, black-framed glasses and high heels.

I gave myself a last look in the mirror, pleased my hair was so well-ordered, then headed out the door to the elevator which took me thirty-seven floors down to the street.

Singapore is the most beautiful city in the world. It's a clean city, an orderly city, a city of tall, glittering skyscrapers with wide streets and boulevards bordered by thick greenery. The trees you'll find along its main downtown streets aren't the pitiful little things you occasionally might find in western cities. These are huge, sweeping rain trees, broad-leafed mahogany, and giant tembusus forty meters high.

The streets of Singapore aren't bordered by a few trees, but forests of trees, flowers, hedges, and bushes. Greenery is everywhere! Dirt is nowhere to be found! The city is not entirely crime-free, but as close to it as you'll find for a place this big.

I was astonished when I arrived. I'd been to Paris, Madrid, Rome, and New York and never seen anything even remotely similar. Everyone was so polite, and everything so well-organized! And no one hits on me in the streets!

Compared to London, and especially Paris and Rome, that's nirvana! I can walk around and enjoy window shopping (or the real kind), or jog, if I can take the heat, without having to fend off guys who see me, think I'm sexy, and want me.

Don't get me wrong. I'm happy to be attractive. Any girl who says otherwise is lying through her teeth. But there are times I enjoy it, and times I wish people wouldn't stare, or at least wouldn't try to chat me up. I don't know you! I'm not going to give you my phone numbers or name! Go away! You could be a serial killer or something!

I don't think men understand women on a quite fundamental level. Dating and sex to them are just games, without the stress or worries women have. They see a woman they're attracted to, and they ask for her name. They don't care who she is. They don't care what kind of a person she might be. All they see is the face and body. And that's all they care about.

I suppose that comes from being bigger and stronger. No fear.

Plus, of course, sex for men is a nearly 100% guarantee of pleasure. They don't need the woman to do anything but be present. Oh, sure, they might prefer more, but when you get right down to it men will have sex with a girl who's unconscious and still get off on it.

Women have no guarantees at all. Maybe he'll know what to do with his hands, or maybe not. Maybe he'll have a decent-sized penis, or perhaps it will be tiny. Maybe he'll be good at oral sex, but likely not. Maybe he'll know how to do foreplay and actually do it. But possibly not.

There are, in my experience, an awful lot of guys out there who know very little about sex beyond what they've seen in porn videos. Some of that is our fault, of course, we women. We fall for some guy and let him have sex, and then, to protect his ego, we don't tell him how bad he was. So he goes on doing it with other girls.

The exception is men who have been in relationships. I know I don't hesitate to point out certain things I want when I'm with a guy - if we're in a relationship. I've 'trained' a couple of guys that their new girlfriends ought to send me thank-you cards for.

But it's all a gamble when you accept a date. Will he take no for an answer or get angry and bitter if you refuse - or worse, violent? We just don't know. And if we agree to sleep with him will he be any damned good or will it be a miserable, painful experience? We just don't know until we do it.

There's a reason why men orgasm almost 100% of the time during sex while almost half of women never do. And it's related to unfair anatomy and male ignorance of what they need to be doing to pleasure their partner (assuming they care).

And that's another divergence for us girls. We go out with a guy hoping he'll be fun and interesting, and they go out with us hoping we'll let them have sex.

I've been prey to predatory guys since I hit puberty. I've always been called pretty, with an oval face, big blue eyes, full lips, and lovely eyelashes. My shoulder-length mahogany hair is full and soft and thick and rich and neatly tamed so that it perfectly frames my face as it spills down to my shoulders.

So I get looked at a lot. Guys like eye-candy (well, so do girls, admittedly) so I get a lot of second looks wherever I go. I'm used to it by now. My body is slender, lithe, and toned because I exercise a lot to make sure it is. I'm especially proud of my breasts.

So yes, guys want me. A lot. They want to touch me. They want to tear my clothes off. They want to fuck me. They always have. And that, given how society works, makes me prey. And given I'm much shorter and weaker than almost any guy I'm very much at their mercy in private. Thus the wariness I have.

So an orderly, law-abiding city like Singapore, where most people are far too polite to stare at strangers, much less hurl crude insults at them, is like heaven.

I work as the junior administrative assistant to the president of the Merchant Bank of Hull, which is headquartered in London. Now, you might, if you were rude, ask yourself how a nineteen-year-old English girl on her summer break from her second year at Cambridge finds herself in such a lovely, well-paid job halfway across the world.

Nepotism. Yes, sorry, but it's all connections. There's no such thing as white privilege, but there's definitely class privilege. The president of the bank is, well, my uncle Joshua. He arranged it for me, with my parents' consent. They're major shareholders. They knew I wanted to go somewhere over the summer and chose Singapore, probably because, as I said, it's a very safe city.

They also arranged for me to stay at a condo which the bank owns. It's normally used for high-level visitors or senior executives who transfer from elsewhere. It would normally be occupied by my boss here, but he's Indian and has five kids, so found it too small.

So I get to stay in it free!

And if you have any idea the cost of a nice apartment in Singapore you'll realize just how incredibly generous the bank is being to its branch president's junior administrative assistant!

Thanks, Uncle Joshua!

I walked along the sidewalk, pleased at how clean it was, pleased at the scent of flowers and greenery growing lushly along the side of the road. It was half-past Nine, which meant most workers were at work. The streets weren't very crowded and I had an easy walk to work.

Luckily the condo and office are only blocks away from each other. Not only does that save me time but it saves me from getting all mussed up and sweaty in the heat. Singapore is in the tropics, after all. It gets quite hot and quite humid.

My boss here is Mr. Mbeki. He's very formal and very polite. The tasks I'm given are reasonably easy, but not too easy. I'm not sure what Uncle Josh told him but he seems to be tailoring things so I learn and gain experience in banking.

My job starts at Ten AM. Mrs. Chan, who is the senior administrative assistant, starts at Six in the morning. She leaves work at Two PM. I work on until Six PM. Mr. Mbeki works all during this time and doesn't seem to find his twelve-hour days difficult.

I stopped off in the lobby for a tea, and took it with me up the elevator to the Fifty-Third floor, then walked down the corridor to Mr. Mbeki's office and let myself in. There was an outer office presided over by Mrs. Chan with her big desk facing the outer door. She was a middle-aged woman with considerable expertise and aplomb and I felt vastly inferior in knowledge and skills to her.

"Good morning, Mrs. Chan," I said, bobbing my head.

"Good morning, Elena," she replied with a slight nod of her regal head.

I headed into the side room, which I suspected had been a storage room prior to my arrival. Now it had a desk and chair, shelf, and side table with a printer. I had put up a large, narrow print of a palm tree on one wall, and a smaller one of waves washing ashore on another.

That had baffled Mrs. Chan, since the idea of decorating your office, of personalizing it, was apparently something she had previously not considered. I suspected I got away with it only because visitors would not see them and she knew who my uncle was.

The Chinese are a very hierarchical people. And no one challenges the boss, nor wishes to annoy the boss's relatives. Nepotism is a way of life in Asia.

I sat down, turned on the computer, and brought the mirror out of my top drawer just to lightly brush my hair and ensure it was in proper order.

My desk was empty, of course, and clean. I like to work on one thing at a time so there's no reason for anything else to be on the desk. Well, except for my tea, of course, which I put on a tea cozy.

And thus did my day unfold, perfectly orderly, perfectly calm, precise, with me finishing each task and then starting another. Mr. Mbeki stopped by to say hello a couple of times on his way in and out, and Mrs. Chan brought me some documents to photocopy. Once photocopied I carried them up and down the hall to the offices of other senior executives, giving them to their admins, then came back.

At noon I went downstairs to get lunch; a salad, and brought it back to my office. I entertained myself with my phone, the cordless buds in my ears turned up more loudly now. Mrs. Chan was away, probably eating with her friends. I'd been invited, of course, but my Mandarin was still weak, and her friends were all, like her, middle-aged anyway.

Mr. Mbeki was at a meeting somewhere across town, leaving me alone in the office. That was fine with me. I enjoyed my own company and my own thoughts. At least I did until the outer door opened and a man came in.