by Carrie Lomax
Call terminated. Janelle’s mouth hung open, a tangle of retorts about revenge porn being illegal dying unspoken. Even if it was, he could say she’d consented and what then? She set the phone down carefully. Her stomach heaved as a fine cold sweat covered her forehead. She’d never wanted a stiff drink so badly in her life.
The door clicked open. “I hope ham and cheese is okay. You’re not vegetarian or anything…Did something happen?”
Janelle felt her head move as though she were a puppet dancing on a string. “No. I called my phone. It’s fine. I’ll get it back.”
Eventually. Right before she was arrested for Kyle’s murder, just long enough to make her one phone call to a lawyer. Crystal was in law school, maybe she’d handle it pro bono. Janelle figured Crys owed her a favor for her role in this debacle.
Janelle unwrapped the sandwich on the table and stared at it until Mason’s voice called her back to the present.
“You have parents who can help?”
“And tell them how I ended up here? No way.” She picked up the sandwich and took a bite without tasting it.
Mason’s appetite was in fine form. He tucked into his sandwich and licked a bit of dressing off his thumb. “How bad is it?”
“The mess I’m in? Pretty bad.”
“Drugs?”
Did she look that strung out? “No!”
Drugs were one problem she didn’t have. Though she’d sure looked like a potential addict in the excuse for a dress with makeup running down her face. Janelle shifted uncomfortably and examined her sandwich.
Mason, on the other hand, perked up considerably. “Sex?”
“How’d you guess?” The return of her habitual sarcasm was unbelievably welcome. She bit into the sandwich. “Was it the outfit?”
Mason’s mouth ticked up at the corners. “Money?”
“The root of all evil.” Janelle rubbed her forehead. Now that her anger had leached out, fear, failure, and loneliness had stolen her appetite.
“What’s your name?”
“Jan-” Hey, wait a minute. “Janie.”
He crumpled the paper of his sandwich and waited a beat. “No last name?”
“You gave me one name, I’ll give you one name. If you want to know more, spill.”
Mason stood up and tossed the ball of sandwich paper into the trash can by the desk. “You’re cheeky for someone in a fix.”
“You like it, though.” Whoa. Where had that come from? This was no time to get flirty.
He chuckled but admitted nothing. Instead, he stood up and pulled out a wooden door on the dresser. Inside was a dorm-sized refrigerator. Mason removed two airplane bottles of gin and a pint-sized bottle of tonic.
“No limes. You want a gin and tonic anyway?”
Mysterious Mace Mason was her guardian angel. She must’ve done something right in her life if he was offering her the drink she needed. “Yes, please.”
“Are you twenty-one?” he asked skeptically.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. She was too decrepit to sleep with a dirty old man but appeared too young to drink? “I’m twenty-five.”
“You look younger.” He cracked open the bottles and mixed the contents into matching hotel glasses. “A lot younger.”
“Especially without makeup.” She took the glass and downed half of it in a single gulp.
“You looked like a baby raccoon with all that shit on your face. I thought you were sixteen.”
“Nope. Completely of age. Next milestone is running for President, and then AARP discounts here I come.”
The sound of Mace Mason’s startled laughter was a balm to her pride. The gin and tonic was the perfect temporary antidote to threatening Rich Jerks and hot, untouchable guardian angels. The booze went straight to her head and took every pleasure synapse of her brain hostage.
She had a problem to solve. Except that instead of thinking through how to get her wallet and phone back from Rich Jerk, all she could think about was Mace Mason’s broad shoulders and narrow waist. “How old are you, Mace?”
“Thirty.”
“Cheers.” Janelle held up her glass. He tapped hers, looking straight into her eyes as he did. Everything inside her went hot and soft. But attraction wasn’t going to get her a pass.
“What happened this morning, Janie?”
3
Janie’s expression turned as sour as a lemon. “Why should I tell you?”
Exasperating woman. For a minute there, she’d gone relaxed and flirty. Now she’d flipped like a switch back to wary and defensive.
At least it wasn’t drugs. Sex, well, he could be broad-minded about whatever she was into. He had exactly zero moral standing to judge anyone on that point. Money, though, the jury was still out.
Trent glanced at his watch. “I’m leaving in fifteen minutes for the afternoon half of my conference. If you want to stay here and figure out how to straighten things out, I need to know that it’s not going to boomerang back on me. What kind of trouble are you in?”
“Big trouble,” she said softly through pink lips.
“How big?” Trent wished they were talking about sex. This conversation could play out so many dirty ways. His rational brain was holding the door against lusty ideas like a doomed character about to get eaten in a zombie flick.
Without makeup, Janie’s fine bone structure was clearly visible. Large green eyes rimmed by dark lashes, a manicured sweep of dark eyebrow, the straight slope of her nose above the perfect philtrum that led to plump, pink lips. Below, a stubbornly pointed chin that spoke volumes about her frankly shitty attitude.
In addition to that face, Janie was blessed with a long, elegant neck, and he’d not forgotten the one instinctive glimpse he’d stolen of her incredible breasts. He was only male, after all.
And it had been a long time.
Janie, if that was her real name, licked her lips and dropped her gaze to the floor. “I came here to meet a man. For sex.”
“Turning tricks?”
“No!” Her eyes searched his, pleading and outraged. “He was supposed to be my…my arrangement.”
“An arranged encounter,” he repeated, half understanding and half perplexed. His cock was certainly enjoying the diversion of talking about sex with an actual woman after a years-long, self-imposed drought. Her t-shirt dipped at the center, showing a couple inches of bra-trapped cleavage. Trent didn’t look lower than her neck, unless you counted a furtive check of her legs. Encased in thin cotton, they were toned and slender. She was slim everywhere, except for the chest.
“I was supposed to be his sugar baby,” she blurted, high cheekbones flushed red.
Oh. That’s what the kids were calling it these days. “He was older, I take it?”
“Much. And he’s an asshole. I arrived last night, but I was out when he checked into the hotel this morning. He left a note to wear the sexiest thing I’d brought and be ready around noon. You saw how I was dressed. I tried, but I couldn’t go through with it. He threw me out of the room.”
“That’s it?” Mason sat back on the bed. “You almost screwed some old guy for money but didn’t?”
“I couldn’t!” she almost screamed, tears welling in those green depths.
“Why not?”
“Because…” She downed the rest of her gin and tonic. “Because I’ve only been with one person before.”
One partner at the age of twenty-five. By his low standards she was practically a virgin. “I assume that was true going into the situation?”
Janie hung her head. “Yes.”
“What changed?”
She shrugged. “Up to that point, it hadn’t felt…real. He told me to do a strip tease and tried to stick his dick in my mouth, and I told him I couldn’t do it. I wanted to go home. He tried to pin me to the bed, but I fought him off. He called security, which I guess is where you pick up the story.”
Janie raked her hand through her dark hair. It was a soft, rich cloud glinting with reddish highlights. Probably dyed.
“Now he has my cell phone and wallet, and he’s threatening to send some video to everyone on my contact list.” The words came out in a whispered confessional rush. “He says he emailed it to me.”
Internet security. Sex tapes. Those were things he could help her with. As long as she wasn’t into drugs, he could help her without dredging up memories that could send him spiraling downward in this most dangerous of all cities. “Was he paying you?”
If Janie blushed any harder she’d turn into a tomato. “Not directly. He’d offered a stipend. A thousand dollars a month for two weekend encounters.”
Trent sighed. This girl was a babe in the woods if she thought it was a fair deal. She was stacked, attractive and clearly educated. “You’d have gotten more working at a crappy escort service.”
“Plus travel expenses,” she replied indignantly.
As if that made any difference. Trent downed his drink and set the glass on the table. Between a beautiful woman crashing his hotel room and him standing in the hot sun for a sandwich, his shirt was sweat-damp and wrinkled. He’d have to change unless he wanted to chase off any prospective business contacts with BO. Pushing off the bed, he went to the closet and slid the door open.
“You can stay here for a few hours. Make some calls. Get your ID replaced. Call your parents to get money for your own room. I’ll be back around five.” He unbuttoned his shirt, aware of her watching him.
Cute little Janie who’d only slept with one person. Person, not man. Maybe she was a lesbian?
Judging from the way her eyes were riveted on the mirror before him, not a chance.
The placket opened gradually. Her eyes widened. How long had it been since any woman had watched wide-eyed as he undressed? He’d lost count. Trent knew he should stop now, before innocent little Janie’s eyeballs popped out and stood on stalks. Instead, he unbuckled his trousers to pull out the hem of his shirt.
Janie’s mouth went slack. She swallowed, and he bit back a smile. Totally innocent. How the hell had a chick like her gotten mixed up in quasi-prostitution?
The world could be an incredibly shitty place. Trent tossed the shirt onto the floor of the closet with the small pile of dirty laundry growing there. Then, he pulled up the undershirt he wore and chucked that too. He balled it in his hands and looked over his shoulder.
“Enjoying the show?”
Janelle coughed and grabbed her drink. “Sorry.”
Trent tossed the wadded undershirt onto the heap and went to the bathroom. He couldn’t exactly tug one off with her out there listening, but he wanted to.
“Your tattoo’s interesting.” Janie declared the instant he came out of the bathroom. “I apologize for staring.”
She sounded properly contrite, which was disappointing. Trent supposed nice girls from the suburbs didn’t see a lot of half-naked ex-Army guys with giant tattoos spread across their backs. He’d enjoyed her momentary interest for what it was—momentary—and didn’t want her feeling bad about checking him out. After all, he’d done the same to her, and he didn’t feel remotely bad about it.
“It’s the story of Icarus, isn’t it?” The ice cubes clinked against the glass as she took a long, fortifying sip.
Yeah, she was educated.
“No. It’s my story.” He pulled a fresh undershirt over his head and a new shirt out of the closet before conceding, “There’s a few similarities.”
“For a minute there, I thought you had actual wings.”
Like he was some sort of angel. Which given where he’d found her, maybe he was. Her crappy luck if she believed for one minute he was any kind of savior. Dressed, Trent ventured over to the table she sat behind and picked up the hotel stationery and pen. “Here’s the guest password to use my computer.”
She accepted it with small, lovely hands. Trent took Janie by her stubborn chin and tilted her face up. “I am an expert in cyber security. If you attempt to do anything other than check your email, I’ll know. I will nail you to the fucking wall if you attempt to hack into any other system. Understand?”
Wide-eyed, she nodded. He let go, but the sensation of her soft skin under his fingertips stayed with him.
* * *
The video was bad. She’d been out of the room when he’d arrived, and Kyle had clearly planted a camera in her absence. That required a coldness of calculation that implied he’d done this kind of thing before.
Everything she’d done up to the point he’d dropped his pants and tried to shove his semi-hard dick in her mouth was caught on tape. It was grainy, but there was sound and there was no point pretending it wasn’t her, there willingly at least up to that point.
Mason seemed like a nice enough guy, provided she didn’t attempt to hack into his computer—which she wouldn’t know how to do even if she wanted to—so she helped herself to another drink from the mini bar. Vodka cranberry this time since the gin was gone. He’d understand. Janelle jotted an IOU on the hotel-branded notepad.
Then she used the hotel phone to call the agency hotline. She wasn’t going to let Kyle get away with this. If he was doing it to her, he’d probably done it to someone else, and he’d probably to it again. Solidarity, ladies.
“Your contract doesn’t specify no filming, and oral sex was something you agreed to perform,” the woman on the other end replied unhelpfully.
“I didn’t sign any image rights release forms. I read the paperwork before signing it,” Janelle seethed. She was fucking literate, after all. That is beside the point. The point is that Kyle stole your personal property and is threatening you. Focus.
It wasn’t easy after she’d consumed the gin and tonic and half of the vodka cranberry, but she voiced her complaint anyway. “Revenge porn is illegal.”
She wished she’d been quick enough to point that out she she’d been on the phone with Kyle. Stupid.
“We don’t get involved in personal disputes,” the woman on the other end of the line replied. “I recommend you call the police.”
So much for female solidarity. “He is threatening to send an illegally obtained video to my friends and family to force me to have sex with him.”
“You agreed to have sex with him.”
“Well, that was before I met him, and now I want my goddamn wallet back so I can get home!”
“I am not a law enforcement agent. I have no authority to assist you. I can call him, that’s it.”
“You could throw him out of the program. I doubt this is the first time Kyle’s done something like this.”
Click. Janelle gave the phone a dirty look. She was dirty. She was such a pathetic failure; she couldn’t even succeed at screwing an old guy for cash. She sucked at being good. She sucked at being bad. She was a waste of a human being. Ugh.
Janelle needed to wash the thoughts away as badly as she needed to rinse off the lingering creepiness of Kyle’s hands on her body. A faint bruise marked her left wrist. Another bloomed over each bicep, though they were probably from the guards. She took a quick shower, since Mace was out of the picture for a bit, and she didn’t want to impose later. Then, she put her clothes back on and braided her hair while considering her next move.
A next move that definitely shouldn’t involve sleeping in his bed, but it did. The sheets smelled of bleach, clean but impersonal. She rolled out of bed, plucked Trent’s undershirt from the pile, and sniffed it.
It was, hands down, the weirdest impulse she’d ever given in to. Nevertheless, she rolled it into a ball and hugged the wad of cotton like a teddy bear while she rested, unable to fall asleep for fear Mason would return and find her cuddling his dirty laundry. The spicy, deodorant-scented bundle made her feel safe, and a little bit stronger. Janelle needed the comfort, and she wasn’t going to overthink it.
After a while she got up, returned the shirt to the pile, and made the bed. She turned on the TV and pulled out her toiletries. While the TV ran in the background, she removed the chipped nail polish from her toes and fingers. Then she applied a n
ew coat of pale pink instead of dark red. One day she’d be able to afford salon mani-pedis.
Along with a new car.
Fake it ’till you make it.
She was never going to make it. She was going to die here of boredom in this weirdly small hotel room, and all alone. Janelle shoved her misery away and booted up the computer to research her options.
4
Midway through the afternoon in a fascinating but highly technical panel discussion of two-factor security weaknesses, Trent realized he’d been sitting there for forty-five minutes without absorbing a thing. He hadn’t paid two grand for the privilege of sitting in a stale conference room in the middle of the desert for four days to rescue green-eyed sirens with other resources to fall back on, like caring parents.
Business contacts were the only reason he was here.
A sharp elbow in the ribs brought his attention back to the present.
“Captain,” he replied, sitting up straight and nodding.
The dark-skinned woman to his left smiled slyly. “Daydreaming, Sergeant?”
“No ma’am.”
Old habits died hard. He’d served for three years in Afghanistan under Captain Olivia Davidson, the last two working cyber communications for military intelligence’s field operations. Now they were both on the outside and partners…of a sort. She’d been out for eighteen months now, and she’d built up her own company by going after government contracts with a ruthless strategy honed on the battlefield.
Trent had declined to re-enlist. He’d thought he was ready to get back to normal life, by which he meant an approximation of Olivia’s life before it had cracked against the rocky shoals of divorce. Married. Children. But once he’d severed from the military and gone on reserve duty, he’d drifted for a few weeks before deciding to follow Olivia’s path.
Within a few weeks, Trent knew he didn’t have the same talent for managing people and growing a business. She’d helped him win a few government contracts and generally get off the ground. She’d been the one to recommend this conference as a potential source of contacts.