by Lauren Rowe
She raises her eyebrows.
“I had a little fling with my intake agent—the woman who reviewed my application.”
“Oh,” Stacy says, seemingly having a genuine epiphany. “That’s who she was?”
Stacy must be extremely low on the totem pole if she didn’t know Sarah’s identity until now.
I lean in like I’m telling her a secret. “I’m a bit of an adrenaline junkie. I couldn’t help myself—forbidden fruit and all that.”
She smiles. Charming Jonas has definitely come out tonight.
“Which one was it? The blonde or the brunette?”
“The brunette. It’s always brunettes for me.”
Stacy’s eyes sparkle. Brunettes always love to hear a man say he prefers brunettes to blondes.
“And brunettes with blue eyes are my absolute favorite.”
I’m laying it on a bit thick, I know, but shit, I don’t have all day. I want to get the fuck out of here so I can go home to my beautiful brown-eyed girl.
“Who was the blonde, then? Another intake agent?”
“No, just the intake agent’s friend. The blonde doesn’t know anything about The Club—to this day, she thinks she was spying on some guy her friend met on Match.com.” Hopefully, that little tidbit of information will find its way up the totem pole and clear Kat from their crosshairs.
Stacy laughs. “Oh, that’s hilarious. I thought . . .” She stops, unsure of how much I know. Obviously, she doesn’t want to unwittingly step into a steaming pile of shit.
“You thought they were new girls, poaching on your territory?”
Stacy raises her eyebrows and twists her mouth in acknowledgment.
“Yeah, so I heard. That’s why I wanted to see you, actually.”
Stacy’s eyes narrow. “Oh yeah? Why’s that?”
“Well, I’m not gonna lie—I had a really nice time with my intake agent. She was a lot of fun. But it’s over now. She got all clingy—you know how that is. I can’t stand clingy.”
“Oh God, neither can I.”
“Well, see, that’s what I figured—because you’re a pro, Stacy. And I like that.”
Her eyes ripple with surprise.
I take a long sip of my beer, eying her. “My intake agent told me all about her encounter with you at that sports bar, when you were wearing the yellow bracelet with that other guy.” Stacy reflexively looks down at the purple bracelet on her wrist, like she’s trying to remember which color she’s wearing tonight. “And I gotta tell you—it really turned me on.”
Stacy’s face reflects earnest surprise. “It did? What about that turned you on?”
“Are you kidding me? You’re not emotionally invested. You staked out your territory—told her not to fuck with you. You’re here to do a job and do it well. I respect that. Like I said, you’re a total pro. A badass.”
She blushes at the compliment. She’s buying what I’m selling. “Thank you.” She tilts her head and smiles. “So you like a badass kind of girl, huh?” She reaches across the table and strokes the top of my hand.
I instinctively jerk my hand away. The woman makes my flesh crawl. I play it off like I’m reaching for my beer.
“Frankly,” I continue, swigging my beer again, “I was relieved to find out the real deal about The Club. Elated, even. The whole reason I joined in the first place was to avoid emotional attachments, you know? Women always get so... emotional. It really ruins the fun for me. That’s what happened with the intake agent, too. She was a sweetheart, a great girl, but then she got emotionally attached, just couldn’t distinguish sex from some sort of fairytale fantasy.”
“Sounds like you need a pro.” She winks.
“Exactly. Someone I can just be totally honest with, you know?”
Stacy raises one eyebrow suggestively. “What would you like to be honest about, Jonas?”
I finish off my beer and flash her my most dazzling smile. “About what each of us wants—what we really want.”
She leans forward, ready to hear it.
“You’re in it for the money.” I smile. “And that’s good. And I’m in it for the sex. Period. I just want to fuck a beautiful woman, whenever I feel like it, no strings attached. None of the bullshit.”
One side of her mouth hitches up. “Well, that sounds good to me.” She stands. “Let’s get the hell out of here, shall we?”
Oh shit. “Hang on a minute. My idea is a bit bigger than that—bigger than just tonight. Sit down and let me tell you what I have in mind.”
She sits back down. “I’m all ears.” She licks her lips.
My stomach somersaults. I’m having a flashback of my tongue on her cunt.
“First off, let me just tell you how incredible you are in bed.” I’m using the word incredible in its literal sense—not credible.
She bats her eyelashes. “It was my pleasure. You were amazing.”
“Aw, that’s sweet,” I say, making myself smile. That’s the phrase Sarah uses when she’s actually calling me a dumbass. Aw, that’s sweet, Jonas, she always says, her eyes laughing at me. “But you were the incredible one, Stacy.” I feel like I’m going to hurl. “The way you came so fast and so hard? That was just... incredible.”
“It was all you.”
“I really like it when women come—have you read my application?”
She shrugs. “It’s been a little while—remind me.” She flashes her most seductive smile.
Yeah, I’m sure she’s read more than a few applications since mine. “I really get off on making women come—especially since it’s so hard to do. I like the challenge of it. Sometimes it takes me a whole month to figure out how to do it with a particular woman.” I chuckle. “Women are complicated.”
She laughs and nods. “We sure are.”
“But I usually manage it somehow, after lots of practice. Not always, of course, but, usually. But with you, it was right away—boom—and so intense, too. That was just totally incredible, Stacy. I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.”
Stacy smiles. “Yeah. It was awesome.”
“So I’ve been seeing my intake agent lately, like I said, and she’s just not like you, Stacy, not at all. One hundred eighty degrees different. She doesn’t get off the way you did—not at all—and, lately, I just can’t stop thinking about how much I want to be with a woman who embraces her own desires, who knows what she wants—a woman who can let go and surrender to her pleasure without holding back.” In other words, I want my Sarah.
Stacy beams at me. “Sounds good to me,” she says. “Why don’t we start right now?” Clearly, she’s politely trying to move this party along. Maybe she’s hoping to squeeze in another check-in later tonight if I’d just hurry the fuck up.
“Hang on. I have a proposition for you.”
She tilts her head to the side, ready for whatever I’m going to say.
“I’d like to purchase a block of your time.”
“Oh.” She smiles. “What do you have in mind?”
“Two weeks.”
Her smile widens. “You want a GFE.”
“What’s that?”
“A Girlfriend Experience.”
I can’t keep my lip from curling. The only GFE I want is with Sarah.
“Right,” I force myself to say. “GFE. I’ll pay extra, of course—over and above what I’ve already paid to The Club for my membership. I think that’s fair because I want you exclusively. I don’t want to wear my purple bracelet, worry about check-ins, etcetera. I just want to take you out of the Club rotation for a couple weeks and have you all to myself. I’d be willing to pay The Club a premium for the privilege—let’s say the equivalent of a month’s membership?”
“How much is a month’s membership?”
“You don’t know?”
“No. I get paid per job.”
“How much do you get paid per job?”
She pauses. “Five hundred.”
She’s full of shit. She just doubled her real take. Clever
girl. But whatever. Even using Stacy’s bullshit number, I quickly do the math in my head. Even if a member checks in every day for thirty days, even after The Club pays their intake agents and whatever other overhead, whoever’s running this shit show must clear close to fifteen thousand per month, per member—and they must have thousands, if not tens of thousands, of members. Oh my God, they’re making money hand over fist.
“Monthly membership costs thirty thousand.”
Stacy’s eyes sparkle, though she tries to act like that number doesn’t impress her.
“Maybe I could negotiate a deal with your boss to get you a bigger piece of the pie than usual? I could sit down with him and—”
“With her.”
My heart leaps out of my chest. Finally, a little bit of information.
“Oh, yeah? You’re boss is a woman?”
“Yeah.”
“Is she a badass like you?”
“That’s an understatement.”
I smile. “What’s her name?”
“Oksana.”
“Oksana,” I repeat. My skin is buzzing. “Russian?”
“Ukrainian. We call her the Crazy Ukrainian.”
I laugh. “Okay, so I’ll talk to the Crazy Ukrainian as soon as possible and offer to pay her thirty thousand in fees to reserve your time exclusively for the next couple weeks—and since that will be separate from my club membership, I’ll tell them my payment is conditioned on them splitting the pot with you fifty-fifty. How does that sound?”
Stacy looks closer to climaxing now than she did when we fucked. “Oh,” she says, her cheeks flushing. “Why do you even need to deal with Oksana? Why not just pay the whole amount to me directly under the table? She doesn’t need to know. Just give me the money, and I give you my word—all my time for two weeks, every minute of every day and night if you want. I’ll fuck you so good, you won’t want our two weeks to end.”
Déjà vu. Didn’t Julia Roberts say something eerily similar to that at the beginning of Pretty Woman? “No, that won’t work. If you’re suddenly not showing up for other check-ins, won’t they figure something’s up?”
She nods, reluctantly. “Yeah, probably. But you could just check-in and request me every day, and then pay me the cash directly. It’s a win-win-win all around.”
Shit. “Hmm. The whole point is I don’t want to do the check-in thing. And, anyway, you’re sure to get a bunch of other requests during that two weeks—I have to believe you’re their top requested girl.”
She smirks. “I am.”
“I don’t want to risk even the chance of sharing you while I’m with you. If we’re sneaky about it and they find out somehow, things could really backfire. You might lose your job and The Club might ban me for the rest of my membership period. I absolutely can’t risk that. I need this club, Stacy.” I flash her my crazy eyes.
She twists her mouth, obviously trying to figure out a way to maximize her take. “I’ll take a ‘vacation’ for a couple weeks—to visit a sick relative or something.”
“How about I make sure you wind up with thirty thousand for the two weeks, no matter what?
She nods profusely.
“But I’d still like to do it above-board. I’ll pay The Club whatever I have to pay, over and above your fee, to make it work. Does that sound good?”
Her eyes light up. “Perfect.”
Jesus. I should hire Stacy to negotiate one of my business deals. She’s a fucking shark. “So do you think Oksana will go for it? Is she the decision-maker, or is she gonna have to clear this with someone else?”
“Why wouldn’t she go for it? It’s all about the Benjamins with her—and, yeah, what Oksana says goes. I told you—she’s a badass.”
“Great. So how do I contact her?”
“Give me your phone number. I’ll tell her to call you.” She pulls out her phone.
“No, I’d prefer to contact Oksana. I like being in control in matters such as this—well, in all matters, actually.” Just for my own amusement, I flash her my crazy eyes again.
“I’m not allowed to give out her number.”
“Is she here in Seattle?”
“No, Las Vegas.”
My skin sizzles. Oksana the Ukrainian in Las Vegas.
“What’s her last name?”
Stacy looks at me sideways. “Why?”
I hold up my phone. “Just wanted to put her in my phone. Is that not allowed?” I play dumb.
There’s a beat.
“You don’t need her last name.”
I pushed it too far. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know. This is all new to me. I’ve never had a GFE before. You know what? I have some business in Vegas, anyway. I’ll kill two birds with one stone and pay her in person in cash so she can pay you right away. Do you have her physical address?”
I’ve said the magic word. Cash. Her eyes light up. “All I’ve got is a P.O. box in Vegas. I’ll give you her email address. You can contact her and figure out how to connect.”
“Great.”
She grabs a pen out of her purse. “I need a piece of paper.” She rummages in her bag.
“You’ve met Oksana in person, I presume?”
“Oh yeah, I started this job in Vegas. I was on the first team of girls, before they branched out to other cities.”
Another kernel of information. Las Vegas is their mother ship.
“I was their top girl in Vegas—most requested.” She smiles with pride. “When they expanded operations, they gave me my pick of cities,” she says.
“And you picked Seattle?”
“I was tired of the dry heat.”
“Well, you certainly solved that problem by coming here, huh?”
She smiles. “And I’ve got family here in Seattle, so . . .”
We sit and stare at each other for a moment in awkward silence. She suddenly looks years younger to me than she did just a moment ago.
“Oksana?” I say, gently prodding her to stay on task and give me that email address.
“Oh, yeah,” she says. “Sure thing.”
“I’ll just input her email address onto my phone.” My stomach hurts. I feel like I’m betraying Sarah. And, frankly, I’m taking no pleasure in scamming Stacy the Faker. I just want to be done with this and go home to Sarah.
“Okay.” She opens her list of contacts on her phone and scrolls down.
I type the name “Oksana” into my contacts and look up, ready for her to tell me the email address. “Okay, what’s the address?”
“Jonas?”
Oh God, no.
Panic floods me like a tidal wave.
This is my worst nightmare.
And my own damned fault.
It’s Sarah.
Chapter 13
Sarah
I look at my watch. Five minutes to seven.
I shouldn’t be doing this right now—I know I shouldn’t. But I can’t help myself.
The tip of my nose is cold and turning red in the chilly night air. I hug my sweatshirt to me and keep walking briskly toward The Pine Box. My heart bangs in my chest. I shouldn’t be doing this. But I pick up my pace, anyway.
After Jonas left the house, I called Kat to make sure no dancing hitmen had paid her a visit today.
“I’m great,” she said. “I’m about to grab dinner with my bodyguard.” And then she belted out Whitney Houston’s famous chorus from The Bodyguard.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, laughing.
“Jonas didn’t tell you? He hired a professional bodyguard to watch over me. Please tell him thank you, by the way—my hunky bodyguard is way cuter than Kevin Costner.”
I was stunned at Jonas’ thoughtfulness, yet again, but also anxious to think he deemed a bodyguard a necessary precaution.
“Do you and Jonas want to meet us for dinner?” Kat asked.
“Not tonight. I’ve got to study and Jonas is out.”
“What’s he up to?” she asked. “Working?”
“I don’t know.
He just said he had something he had to do.”
Kat responded with a kind of wincing noise that spoke volumes about her mistrust of Jonas.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“Jonas and I have been joined at the hip since he picked me up for Belize”—quite often literally joined at the hip, I thought, smirking—“and now he’s all stressed out about protecting me from the bad guys. Poor guy, I’m sure he just needed a little space.”
Kat didn’t reply.
I grunted with exasperation. “Just say whatever it is you’re thinking.”
She sighed. “The guy joined a sex club not too long ago, remember. If he were my boyfriend, I’d want to know what he was doing, that’s all.”
“You don’t know him like I do,” I assured her. “He’s not the dog you think he is.”
“I don’t think he’s a dog. But he’s not a perfect angel, either. I’m just saying, if Jonas Faraday were my boyfriend, I’d want to know where he was.”
Two minutes later, I was clutching that goddamned Club iPhone in my hand like a frickin’ grenade, having found it in only the third drawer I’d opened in the kitchen. Just holding it in my hand made me sick. Until it appeared on the kitchen table this morning, I’d assumed Jonas had gotten rid of the hideous thing after his disastrous night with Stacy the Faker, or, at the very latest, after he’d offered me exclusive membership in the Jonas Faraday Club. Why the hell did he keep it? And if he’d kept the iPhone, I couldn’t help reasoning, did that mean he’d kept the purple bracelet, too? I searched for the bracelet in the same drawer where I’d found the iPhone, but it wasn’t there, which meant he’d thrown the dastardly thing away, thank goodness—or, I suddenly thought, my heart leaping into my throat, that he was wearing it at that very moment. The latter possibility made my flesh crawl. And my heart ache. And the marrow in my Fatal-Attraction bone start simmering. The mere thought of Jonas wearing that frickin’ purple bracelet on his wrist, right alongside the Belizian friendship bracelet that matches mine, made me want to boil a little white bunny in a pot.
Opening the iPhone to confirm or debunk my fears wasn’t possible—the damned thing was fingerprint- and passcode-protected—and so, in a fit of anger, I threw it with a loud clank into the big trashcan in the garage. And that’s when I saw Jonas’ car parked in the garage, the engine cold—which made me flip out even further. Either someone had picked Jonas up to take him wherever he’d gone—not a comforting thought—or, in the alternative, he’d walked there—also not a comforting thought, in light of a conversation Jonas and I had had in Belize.