Free The Mistress Files by Tiffany Reisz

not going to say it out loud.”
    “I appreciate that.”
    “Seriously, the hardest part is caring about my clients. I try not to care about them because my job gets a lot harder when I do.”
    “Why?”
    Sighing heavily, she leaned back in the seat, stretched out her legs and rested them on the seat next to his thigh.
    “I have some fucked-up clients, and I say that with affection. These guys...they have fetishes like you can’t believe. They want to drink urine. They can only get off if you beat their cocks with belts. They need me to put puppy ears on them and make them drink out of the dungeon toilet like a dog. I don’t care. It doesn’t bother me, doesn’t freak me out, doesn’t gross me out. They’re fetishists and that’s fine. Takes all kinds. Sex is weird and wonderful and these guys are harmless. They love their wives, their kids. But they have this deep itch inside them that only coming to me can scratch.”
    “That’s pretty crazy. Drink urine?”
    Now it was her turn to wag her finger at him.
    “Don’t judge, Little Grasshopper. Some of these men could break you in half. They’re strong, smart, complicated. That’s the thing. They’re not boring enough to be vanilla. Most of the men in this country, they’re meat-and-potatoes guys when it comes to sexuality. Gay or straight, they like it plain and simple. Penetration, thrust, orgasm, sleep. That’s it. But then you have my clients. These are the guys who crave escargot, shark fin soup, boiled duck embryos, fucking blowfish. Exotic fare. Those are my people. You eat crazy shit like that and people call you a foodie. You want exotic fare in the bedroom and people call you a sick freak. These men cut their chest open and show me where they keep their souls. It’s heartbreaking to care about them. So I don’t.”
    She heard the tenor of her voice changing and she coughed to clear her throat. She didn’t care about her clients. Not any of them. They were paychecks and nothing more.
    “You do care about them.”
    “You’re a Backstreet Boy. What do you know?”
    He laughed then and she had to laugh, too.
    “I think you and I are both full of shit,” she said.
    “We are. You respect your clients.” It wasn’t a question. She answered it anyway.
    “I do respect them. It’s the scariest thing you can do—walk into a room where you know you’re going to meet your real self. Would you do that? If there was a mirror out there and you knew if you looked into it, you’d see the real you...would you look?”
    “I think I’d cover that mirror with a sheet and then smash it with a sledgehammer.”
    “Exactly. Me, too. But these guys, they look. So yes, I respect them, I care about them and I give them what they want and what they need. Then after an hour or two, I send them back out into the world that thinks they’re sick perverts. In my dungeon I can protect them, I can make them feel safe and even normal. But out there—” she pointed at the world outside the Rolls-Royce’s window “—they’re on their own.”
    “You can’t save everybody.”
    “I can’t save anybody.” She gave him a half-hearted smile. “But it doesn’t matter. That’s not what they pay me for.”
    The Rolls brought them to a grey door in a grey parking garage. Dante didn’t seem impressed. That was okay. No one was ever impressed by The 8th Circle until they were inside it.
    “This is it?” he asked as the driver opened the door for them.
    “This is it,” she said, pulling her key ring out and letting him into the front hallway. “But don’t be misled. The 8th Circle is like the ugly chick you take home from the bar at last call because you struck out with everyone else. Then you get her home, drop your pants and discover she gives the world’s best blow jobs.”
    “I like her already.”
    “All I’m saying is don’t judge the joint by appearances. Oh, watch out,” she said, grabbing his arm to steer him from a stain on the floor. “You