I was more excited than I’d been in some time. The life of the super-rich sounds like fun to most people. Mention you’ve more money than Croesus and the standard response is to be jealous. But nobody mentions the boredom.

When you can buy anything, what’s the point of buying anything? Want a jet? Want two? Someone else will already have three. You can never buy enough to make that boredom go away. That was why I’d rung the agency in the first place.

Rick had put me onto them. It was a quiet conversation after a game of tennis. We were in the changing room and he asked me what was wrong.

“Nothing,” I said. “What are you talking about?”

“You’ve got the slumped shoulders of a man in pain. What’s up, Arthur?”

“I’m just a bit bored, that’s all. Doesn’t it ever get to you?”

“What?”

“Having nothing to do.”

“What you need is this.”

He handed me a card. On one side was a phone number, on the other a word. - Unseen.

“What’s unseen?” I asked, turning the card over in my hand.

“Just what you need. They hire out women who will do anything for the right price.” He lowered his voice. “And I mean anything.”

“So they’re hookers?”

“No, no, no. Nothing so crass. Listen, just give them a ring when you’ve decided what would get you fired up again. Whatever it is, they’ll do it.”

I hadn’t told Rick about my desires, I hadn’t told anyone. I looked down at the card, wondering if this was my chance to do it at last. It was something I’d never dared to do. For one thing, it was illegal. For another, it was completely immoral.

I pocketed the card and made no promises to Rick. But I did ring them in the end, deciding the worst that could happen was they would say no.

I thought they’d be shocked. To tell an anonymous agency that you want to completely dominate a woman. Worse than that, you want to snatch her off the street to do it. They were going to call me sick and I was going to have to pay a handsome sum so they kept our call to themselves.

I was just so bored of having women fawn all over me. I wanted someone who showed a bit of spirit, who could engage with me on a higher level. If I could take someone and mould them into the woman I wanted, that would make me happy. I knew it was a pipe dream of course. I couldn’t just snatch someone. That was a surefire way to end up in jail for a very long time. Even my money wouldn’t be enough to prevent that. But to roleplay it with a willing participant? Well, that wouldn’t be so bad would it?

Of course, in the end. It didn’t turn out anything like how I expected.

The person who answered the phone already knew my name. “Mr Carrington,” the man answered. “How lovely to hear from you. We’ve been expecting your call.”

“You have?”

“Your colleague informed us he had passed his card on to you.”

“His card? Not your card?”

“Each client is given only one. He has decided to share our services with yourself. Now what can we do for you?”

“What exactly is it you do at Unseen?”

“We are an unseen agency. We offer unseen services, those you cannot get anywhere else.”

“So if I asked for a female hockey team to kick me around a ballroom, you could do it?”

“We would give you the names of three teams to choose from.”

“And a selection of ballrooms presumably?”

“Of course, Sir.”

“What about if I wanted to kill someone?”

“Unfortunately we do have our limits, Sir.”

“And what are they?”

“No murder, no suicide, no children, no animals. Other than that, we can accommodate almost every wish. Otherwise, you get your money back if you are not completely satisfied.”

“And just how much will this cost me?”

He named the sum. Even with the amount in assets I owned, it was enough to make me pause.

“I assure you, it is excellent value,” he added. “We offer what no one else can.”

“Which is?”

“True happiness.”

I thought for a moment. I could hang up, throw the card out. Or I could cancel the purchase of the second jet and put the money towards this instead. I told him what I wanted to do, blurting it out in one long breath.

I winced as I waited to be told just how perverted I was. “I believe I have the perfect woman on our books,” he said. “Do you have pen and paper handy?”

I noted down the address he gave me and the instructions. “You will arrange a party, BDSM themed. She will attend before leaving. We can have her cause a scene if you like or slip out quietly. Either way, you will follow her at a discreet distance. At any time you like, you may snatch her from the street and do what you wish. At the end of that time, she will leave and you will wire us the sum we request.”

“You don’t want paying in advance?”

“We trust you, Mr Carrington. Besides, there may be additional expenses relating to medical care and suchlike which we will add to your bill.”

“Medical care? Do you think I’m going to hurt her?”

“Not at all. Just, accidents can happen, can’t they?”

“Look-”

“There is one more thing, Sir. If you will bear with me.”

“Go on.”

“This is your fantasy and we are loathe to interfere but there is one most important point to remember. There is a safe word we give to all our staff. If she says the safe word, you are to stop whatever is happening immediately.” His voice turned colder. “Is that clear?”

“And what happens if I ignore the safe word?” I had no intention of doing so but I was riled by his tone of voice, that of an angry teacher disciplining a pupil. I was a thirty-five year old billionaire, people did not talk to me like that.

“For one thing, we will be disappointed by your lack of moral fibre.”

“A lot of people have been. Is that all?”

“Not quite. This conversation is being recorded and should the need arise, we will wire it to any and perhaps all news organisations across the planet. The headline, “Arthur Carrington hires woman to abuse,” would make interesting reading, wouldn’t it?”

I gripped the phone so hard it creaked in my hand. “You son of a bitch, you never said anything about-”

“I am sure it will not come to that. Just remember the word, Unseen. If you hear that, stop. Understood?”

“Listen, I’m not sure I want to do this anymore, not if-”

“The steps are already being taken, Mr Carrington. The wheels are in motion as it were.”

“Look, I’ll pay you now. You don’t need to do this.”

“We are doing this. You asked us to. Arrange the party and send her the invite, Mr Carrington. Leave the rest to us.”

He hung up, another first for me. No one ever hung up on me. I rang Rick, ready to give him hell.

“You never told me they’d record the damn call and use it to try and blackmail me,” I yelled when he answered. I started ranting at him about how he’d set me up.

“Just relax,” he said when I paused for breath. “Now tell me one thing.”

“What,” I snapped.

“Are you bored?”

I had to laugh. The son of a bitch was right. I was furious, I was thinking about the consequences of having my name splashed across all the world’s media, of being thrown in the clink. But one thing I was not, was bored.

“So it’s doing the trick,” he continued. “I felt the same as you when I got the card. Just relax and enjoy it. It’ll be worth it, I promise.”

The invitations went off that evening while the staff prepared the house. The most important letter went first, addressed to Ms X. The others followed. It wasn’t the first BDSM themed party I’d held. But it was the first one in a long time that got me excited.

Once I’d gotten over my anger about being blackmailed, I realised Rick was right. I wasn’t bored, I was excited, nervous even. I was going to get to live out a fantasy I’d had for years, snatch a beautiful woman and own her. I just hoped she wouldn’t say the safe word. Because once I began what I had planned, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop.