“Speaking of that, I’m a little mad at you, you know,” he says out of the blue.
“You are?”
“Yeah. I didn’t like when you talked to that Marc guy,” he says, studying her for her reaction. “You were very flirty with him, Mrs. ‘I Have No Social Skills.’”
“Marc?”
She scans her memory. Marc…that must’ve been her dad’s former assistant who had stopped by the party to say hello. Marissa didn’t remember her interaction with him being anything out of the ordinary, just the typical small talk. But still…Nate’s possessiveness makes her feel strangely turned on. She’d never had anyone care who she talked to before, and she liked it. She liked that he cared.
“Are you jealous?” she asks with a little smile.
“Yes,” he says plainly, making something clench up in Marissa’s belly again. She looks away.
This is bad, she thinks. In Marissa’s world full of Dan Humphreys, he was a Chuck Bass. He was funny, and charming, and when she was around him all of her quarter life crisis-related problems melted away, leaving her feeling light and free. Something shined in his eyes whenever he smiled that made something tickly happen at the bottom of her stomach. Was she really going to sleep with a stranger? If the stories she’d heard from her friends were right, there was a possibility she could fall in love with him. Maybe forever. Did she really want to risk that?
She could always back out now. He had done his job, acted as her boyfriend at the party, and it was over.
But if she turned him away that meant she wouldn’t be able to see him again. Was she okay with that? Maybe she could try to date him after this. No, that didn’t make sense. How do you move forward with someone when your first meeting consisted of meeting for paid sex? And even if it did work out, she’d still be dating a male hooker. That would never work.
She looks over and sees that he is staring at her again, his eyes blazing even though his face is cloaked in darkness.
“What is it?”
“I can see your nipples through your top,” he says.
“Oh. Is that bad?”
“Yes,” he says. “Mostly because I want to be biting them while you climax under me, and that’s not happening right now, and it’s distracting. You’re a religion, Marissa.”
Her whole body is rocked by an icy-hot tremor that starts in her toes and explodes up into her torso before fanning out into fingers, which tingle with the ghost of it. “Oh.”
She swallows the last of the champagne in her glass, sets it down, and then takes a gulp and leans into his ear. “I want that to happen, too.”
“Perfect.”
He suddenly stands up and pulls off his shirt, and Marissa nearly convulses. She’s never seen a body like that before. Not even in the movies. She can’t even imagine how it would feel to the touch; how it would feel on top of her.
But still, the defeatist in her doesn’t want to believe a guy like this would ever be turned on by her, even for money.
“Tell me you were lying when you said I was beautiful,” she says. He shakes his head.
“There’s a moral clause in the contract I signed with ManCard. I am not allowed to tell lies.”
“Wait,” she giggles, “you have a moral clause? To be…a male escort?”
“I guess it does sound a little weird,” he says. “It’s mostly just to prevent people from stealing from clients and stuff, but I guess it does sound pretty strange.
Marissa laughs louder and freer than she has in months.
“Stop,” he says as he stares at her.
“What?”
“Laughing. Your boobs shake when you do it. You’re turning me on too much, and I told myself I would go slow.”
“Oh. Well. Okay then.”
“How about some TV?” he says as he reaches for the remote.
“Oh, no, don’t-”
Too late. Nate turns on the television, and instantly it displays two large-breasted blondes engaging in some very immoral conduct with a muscular gentleman on a channel with a very naughty name…the channel Marissa had been watching before Nate came.
“Oh my God, how did it get on that channel?” she asks. “I wasn’t watching this, I swear!”
Suddenly a notification box pops up on the screen:
Hello Marissa, are you sure you would still like to record Brandi and Krystal: Wet, Wild, and Slutty (Part 19) at 11:30 tonight?
Nate looks over at her, the outline of a smile on his lips.
“Okay, sue me,” she finally says. “I watched a little porn before you came. What can I say? I was too stressed to watch Gravity.”
She expects him to burst into laughter, but instead his reaction is different…and better.
“Don’t apologize,” he says as he licks his lower lip. “Bad girls never do.”
Bad girls? she thinks as he turns back to the TV and the sounds of the moaning girls fill the room. Maybe Marissa was being bad, but she was sick of being good. She was sitting in a hotel room watching porn with a stranger. That she was paying. She knew it was wrong.
And that’s exactly why she liked it so much.
Nate glances over at the porno and then scoots closer, fire in his eyes. “You want a guy like that, in the movies, don’t you?”
She plays dumb. “What do you mean?”
“You want one to do those things to you, like they do.”
“I mean, I guess…”
“Well I’m better.” He reaches out to stroke her arm, and chill bumps appear on her skin. He starts exploring her while he speaks, his voice slow and deep and velvety. “First,” he begins as her breath gets trapped in her throat, “I’m going to take off all your clothes with my teeth while you stand in the bathroom. Then I’m going to explore every…single…inch of you with my tongue, but I won’t let you orgasm. I’ll save that for the shower. I’m going to turn on the water, hot as can be, and then push you up against the wall of the shower face-first. While the hot, steamy water rolls off your skin, I’m going to get behind you and fuck you hard against the wall while I bite your earlobes and lick your neck and whisper filthy things to you. One hand will be around your front caressing your nipples and the other will be down below, circling your most sensitive spot while I slide in and out of you. And when you do come, I’ll drag it out until your knees give way. You’re a dream, I want all of you, Marissa.”
Marissa’s eyes roll back into her head. She pulls away instinctively.
“Why are you still hesitant? Tell me, Marissa,” he says, almost begging. Desperate to recover after that paralyzing speech, Marissa looks out the window at a twinkling Atlanta and sighs.
“I’m sorry. I know it’s frustrating. Trust me, that was amazing, but this is all so strange. I want a million different things at once but I can’t have any of them.”
“I know it’s strange,” he says with that far-off look. “I admit that. But then again, that’s what life is, a beautiful strange little thing, isn’t it? We’re all just a bunch of humans bumping around on this little rock, trying to make sense of it all, making all the same mistakes in a million new ways. It’s all pretty grand, all this strangeness, don’t you think?”
“Wow,” Marissa whispers as she stares at him in a daze.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she says as she glances away. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just don’t want to…feel anything, or whatever. Trust me, sex is different for guys than it is for girls. Things happen.”
“Oh…feelings.” Suddenly Courtney’s blue eyes stare up at him from that deep place in his soul. “Trust me, that can happen with us, too.”
“Also,” Marissa says, trying not to focus on how appealing Nate looked when he said that, “I get a feeling that you’re really…good at this, and I’m not, and I’m afraid I’d be a disappointment.” She swallows and points at the TV. “I don’t know how to do stuff like that.”
“One, you’re not a disappointment, you’re beautiful,” he tells her. “And second,
I would find upmost pleasure in teaching you how to do ‘stuff like that,’ Marissa. I need my mouth on you, and I need it on you now.”
She shivers, her body already at the edge of coming undone, and then she takes a deep breath and leans into his ear. “Okay. But first, tell me a secret.”
A devilish smile spreads over his wet, pink lips, and he turns and whispers into her ear, tickling her earlobe. “Okay. I’m ashamed to say I still don’t know exactly what riding a surfboard means, but I’d like to find out.”
She giggles, but frowns just as quickly at what she has to tell him next. “That can be arranged. But there’s one more thing I haven’t told you. It’s a bit of a bombshell, actually.”
“You’re the only bombshell I see, but go ahead.”
He thinks I’m a bombshell, she muses, the words alien in her mind. Then she fills her lungs with air as she stares down at the lush carpet, unable to even meet his eyes. “I’ve only had sex with two guys. When I say I’m totally clueless in bed, I mean it. I’m sorry.”
Marissa looks over, half expecting to find disappointment swimming in his stormy eyes, but what she sees makes every inch of her light up with searing flames of need instead.
“Oh, babe,” Nate growls as his eyes darken with hunger and he slides toward her like a lion on the hunt. “And you said you weren’t good at this.”
XIV
Boom
Forty stories below, Special Agent Burke Watkins smiles at the man forced up against the brick wall in the alley behind the Four Seasons.
“And your employee, Mr. Henry- he’s upstairs servicing a client right now, correct?”
“Fuck,” the suspect mutters under his breath as he struggles against his handcuffs. “I told the bosses I shouldn’t have done that TV interview. I knew the Feds would catch on after all this publicity. Fuck fuck fuck fuck.”
“Putting up a fight won’t help you now, Mr. Meehan,” Watkins says. “I’m going to ask you again: is Nathaniel Henry working for you tonight?”
“Yes,” Ryan finally says, “but he’s a good guy, I swear! Don’t nail him, this is his first night, he doesn’t even know what he’s-”
“Relax, Mr. Meehan,” Watkins says coolly. “Mr. Henry is perfectly fine for now. In fact, we have some very big plans for him.”
“Plans?”
“Plans,” Watkins confirms. “If both of you do exactly as I say from now on, neither of you will be in any trouble at all.”
Ryan swallows. “And if we don’t?”
Agent Watkins suddenly slams his car door shut, the boom reverberating off the alley walls before escaping up into the night above. He straightens his posture, turns back to Ryan, and flashes one last polite smile.
“I’m afraid that’ll be on you, my friend.”
THE CALLBOYS SERIES IS ONLY JUST BEGINNING
LOOK FOR PART II, COMING SOON
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