She hoped the blindfold hadn’t smudged her makeup. It probably wouldn’t be all that visible in the dark room anyway, but she liked to feel like she was good-looking and in control of her own appearance. A piece of spinach caught in her teeth was about the most embarrassing thing she could imagine or a stain on her dress that she had missed.
Just as they took the blindfold off her, they switched on a spotlight so that she had to screw up her eyes not to be dazzled.
She slowly opened them and squinted towards the small stage in the centre of the room. There was a table with a mattress on it and leather straps. There were spotlights illuminating it so that no one would miss a thing. The walls of the room were painted black and it smelled faintly of bodily fluids and a couple of suffocatingly sweet odours that she didn’t want to know any more about. The walls contained a series of windows forming a circle around the stage. Well, an octagon. All the windows had steel blinds drawn down in front of them and a red light next to them.
Three muscular guys in nothing but underpants were snorting lines of a white substance and popping small blue pills which they washed down with neat vodka while looking at Jenna without greeting her.
‘Do you want to shower first?’
A burly man with a shaved head and leather jacket asked the question in heavily accented English.
‘I showered at home,’ said Jenna.
‘Where do you want this?’
An equally well-toned but somewhat younger man came in carrying a first-aid kit, and the shaven-headed one waved towards the corner beyond the spotlights.
Jenna looked anxiously at the first-aid kit and then at the shaven-headed man, who met her gaze.
‘It’s going to be rough. But we’ve got a doctor here. And when it’s over you’ll be rich.’
‘What’s the safe word?’
He stared at her.
‘That’s not how it works here.’