How the hell had this happened?
~
As much as I wanted to call him right away and start screaming at him, I knew discretion was the better part of valor. I knew I should hold off, let my emotions cool down—if only because he had told me to call him tomorrow.
Instead, I went to the gym. I belong to a kickboxing and MMA gym—it’s a pricey, fancy place for investment bankers and lawyers to work out and live their dreams of being ring fighters. It’s also for yuppie wives who wanted to get super toned.
And, finally, it’s for people like me—people who, for whatever reason, want to learn to fight. There was a small group of us—cops, professional fighters, former military—and then me.
My trainer, Bo, an ancient coach from the Bronx who supposedly had trained a few world contenders back in the ‘70s, was one of the only people who knew what I did for a living. I had told him when I was trying to convince to train me—a chubby, out of shape girl who didn’t know her right from her left.
Over the months, he hadn’t exactly transformed me into a lean, mean fighting machine but he had taught me to hold my own. I had been able to fight my way out of a few sticky situations with clients once or twice—they had been scary, but nothing that a quick jab to the nose couldn’t solve.
I found Bo and after a warm up, he held a pair of focus mitts for me to hit. As we maneuvered around the ring, I noticed that he was quieter, more pensive than usual.
Finally, he revealed what was on his mind.
“You know… A white feller’ came ‘round looking for you this morning…”
I raised an eye brow, panting in between blows. Left, right, hook…
“What’d he look like?” I grunted.
“Tall, good looking feller,” Bo said sagely, slowly. Years of watching fighters, of analyzing their strengths and weaknesses and diagnosing their flaws all from the way they moved had given him an almost supernatural ability to deduce facts about people. When he first met me, he guessed correctly that I had been abused by my biological father growing up—all from the way I looked over my shoulder when a man who had the same foot-fall as my father came out of the locker room.
“Seemed solid. Seemed like he could take a punch.”
Left, right, hook, uppercut. Bo tapped me on either shoulder. I put my arms up, covering my face, as if deflecting imaginary blows. This was an important part of boxing training—you weren’t always the one doing the hitting. More often the not, you took the punches—at least until you learned out to protect yourself and how to be smart. I knew from Bo that fairly few fighters ever got that far.
“Anything else?” I asked in between long, gasping breaths. Bo jerked his head to the floor of the ring, which I knew meant do twenty push-ups—an exercise which I had always hated in grade school and middle school PE class and which was made all the harder by the bulky boxing gloves on my hand. I dropped to the floor and began to crank out the repetitions as Bo continued his analysis.
“Seemed like he’s maybe ex-military. Not happy about it though. Watches doors a lot. Watches people’s hands. Folks like that—usually ex-military, guys who’ve been in war zones.”
I hopped back up to my feet and immediately began to pepper the gloves with blows. After a few moments, Bo against jerked his head to the ground. More push-ups. Damn it. It was going to be one of those days. As if my pussy and ass weren’t sore enough as it was, now my chest was going to be aching too…
“Yeah, I would say a feller’ who’s seen combat, but who’s still torn up about it. Post-traumatic stress disorder is what they call it. I read a couple articles about it in the Times.”
I was on my feet again and had my hands up over my head, warding off the rapid fire blows from the mitts that Bo began to rain down on my head. Sometimes, his hands dropped down to my gut and I had to dance out of the way or drop my hands—which then left my face open. It was a delicate game of chess and not one that I was good at. Nonetheless, it was one I had gotten better at—even if my ass hadn’t shrunk at all.
“I don’t know…” I said when we were done with the workout. “If it’s the guy I’m thinking of… I don’t think he has PTSD.”
I took a break from talking to down a few gulps of water while Bo scratched his grizzled old chin. He was blind in his left eye, and he always seemed to be plotting something, mulling something over whenever I looked into the milky white orb that had once helped him to dodge and return blows with Muhammad Ali.
“Guys with it, they show it in different ways. I’d be careful with this feller, is all I’m saying. Might be a basket case. Might be man of the year. Probably somewhere in between, so it’s hard to say.”
I nodded. I didn’t have anything else to add. David Birch was still mostly a mystery to me—even though he had just been extremely intimate with the most forbidden and delicate parts of my body… And had not be gentle with them at all.
“All I’m saying is, kiddo… Be careful.”
~
When I got home, I showered once more—my third shower of the day. I always felt empowered after boxing. I always felt like I could take on the world and I was half-tempted to call David Birch right away, to tell him he could shove it—tell him that I was my own woman, that he had no right to threaten the agency into firing me.
But instead, I decided it would be more prudent to get some homework done. I had three lab reports due at the end of the week and I hadn’t even begun them. As I sifted through my email, piecing together bits of data that my lab partners had sent me—if they only knew what I did with my life when I wasn’t in lab!—curiosity got the better of me. I googled David Birch.
I got his company’s CEO bio page. It basically gave a gussied up version of his resume—born to a single-mother who worked at a truck stop in Montana. Valedictorian. Stanford.
Then—Marine Corps OCS and two tours in Afghanistan before being honorably discharged after a grenade knocked out his hearing.
Weird. I hadn’t noticed him being deaf. But it did prove Bo right.
After he came back from the war, he went to business school and from there, joined a private equity firm. Two years later, he left with several associates from the firm to start his own outfit. And now, he was a billionaire.
Not bad, Birch. Not bad at all.
There was surprisingly little information about him online besides what the company website said. He had gotten a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star in Afghanistan but that was about it as far as personal information went. He never showed up in gossip columns. He was never photographed stepping out with Jennifer Lawrence or Selena Gomez.
For all intents and purposes, he seemed like a powerfully private man. Interesting that a man so intent on maintaining his own privacy should be so good at stealing it from other people, so good at invading other people’s lives.
But then, maybe that’s where it all stemmed from? He knew how to maintain privacy and that taught him better than else how to take it away from other people.
I glanced at the clock in the corner of my computer screen. It was already late. I had let more than an hour go by researching David Birch. There was nothing else to find and besides, it wasn’t healthy to let him take over my life like this. At least… Not yet.
I’d call him in the morning. And I wouldn’t think about him until then. I had work to do. At least… That’s what I told myself.
~
As soon as I woke up the next morning, I wanted to call him. What would I even say? I forced myself to wait till 8 AM, instead focusing on making myself a nice breakfast and reviewing the problem sets assigned for this week’s organic chemistry lectures.
But once the clock struck eight, I dug out the business card and dialed the number.
It rang and rang and rang. Maybe he wasn’t awake yet. Maybe he was in a meeting.
Maybe he had some other young thing in his lap right now.
The call went to voice mail.
“This is David Birch’s cell phone….” An uncomf
ortable pause. He clearly wasn’t used to dealing with his own technological issues. He probably had an assistant do stuff like this usually. Or maybe he wanted to add something threatening in? Something like “You’d better have a damned good reason for having this number…”
“I’m not available right now, so please leave your name, number, and I’ll get back to you shortly.”
Then, the ubiquitous, ever present beep.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve, mister billionaire,” I blurted out. I sounded like a child but I didn’t care. All the anger of the past day came flooding back. Sure, I had managed to beat it down with boxing and chemistry, but now it was erupting and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
“You think it’s okay to interfere in people’s lives like that? That was my job. You… you know what I’m talking about.”
I was afraid to say anything on the voice mail that directly implicated me in prostitution so I did my best to keep things purposely vague.
“You can’t treat people like that. You can’t treat me like that. That was rotten of you, you bastard… You… Fuck…”
I was petering out, losing steam. I needed to end this.
“I want you to call them right away and tell them you made a mistake, that they need to give me my old job back. Or… or else.”
I felt my cheeks burning. This was dumb. So, so, so dumb. I wished I could erase the message. I wished I could do it all over again. I wished I could have just avoided meeting with him altogether in the first place.
The voicemail clicked off. That was it. I wasn’t about to leave a second message.
I tried to put the message out of my mind. I had to get ready for class, after all. But it was too hard to forget the way I had embarrassed myself. I could imagine David listening to it over and over again, laughing, maybe even playing it for his friends and colleagues—here, listen to the vague threats that last night’s hooker left me!
I felt like I was on the verge of tears all day. I could barely pay attention in lecture. I hid in the back of the hall, glowering at my computer screen as I willed my fingers to take notes.
When the class ended, I wandered out of class, feeling like I had understood nothing, like I had heard nothing. I really might as well have skipped class. Stupid David Birch. This was all his fault.
As I streamed out of the chemistry building with the hordes of NYU undergrads, I bumped into a solid, well-suited figure. I looked up—my eyes had been focused on my dirty sneakers. I wasn’t exactly the type of girl who gets all dressed up for class.
It was, of course, David Birch.
“I got your message,” he said with a smooth grin. “And I’ve got twenty minutes until my next meeting. It’s in midtown. Ride with me?”
He gestured to the limo parked directly behind him.
“I don’t know. Are you paying me for this?” I asked coldly. “I guess I could take PayPal.”
“Why don’t we discuss it in the car?”
I knew it was dangerous and stupid but I followed him into the limo. As I turned around and watched the tinted windows roll up, cutting me off from all the students milling around outside, I wondered what they thought—seeing this slobby girl get into a car with—with that man…
~
“It was terrible of you to get me fired from the agency,” I growled at David as soon as we were off.
“I know, I know… But what can I say? I don’t like to share my toys.”
“I’m not your toy,” I growled back. “I’m my own person and…”
David was already undoing his pants. So. This was what he wanted.
“If you want money, I’ll just give you cash. What’s your going rate for a blow job?”
“The agency always handled that.”
“Maybe I can just pay you in gifts?”
“I’d prefer cash,” I said coolly. “I don’t want you thinking this is anything more than it is…”
I reached into his pants and slid down his boxers. His hard, magnificent cock sprang out. God, but it was a nice cock—I felt my insides churn pleasantly at the memory of having him inside me, the pleasant ache of what his meat had done to me still echoing in my body…
I began to lick him, starting at the base of his cock, sliding my tongue up ever so slowly, working my way from his shaft up to the thick head of his dick. Mr. Birch sighed in delight, leaning back in the limo seat.
“God, but nothing hits the spot like a hot, wet mouth in the middle of the day.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I murmured as he ran his hand through my hair. I began to suckle his balls, teasing and nibbling at his wrinkled flesh. He glanced out the window.
“We’re getting close. You should go to work.”
As if this weren’t work already! He didn’t understand anything about teasing… About building anticipation… What did I expect, after all? He was still a man.
I engulfed him with my mouth, allowing his cock to invade me, impaling my face on his shaft. I gagged a little as I let it slide down my throat, closing my eyes in concentration as I forced myself, forced my throat to accept his thickness, to accept the fat cock that was working its way into me, into my mouth…
Then, I began to bob my head. David grunted in delight, his hips bucking as I sucked him, bucking as I played with his balls, teasing his hot skin and tugging at his shaft.
“Fuck, that’s good…” he growled, grabbing me hard by the hair and pressing my face into his crotch. I gagged and gasped on his cock but I kept my composure, working harder and harder, working faster, slurping shamelessly at his cock as I sucked him.
“Fuck…” he moaned, pressing his hips forward. Suddenly, I felt his cock begin to spasm and pulse in my mouth. I knew what was coming and I took his shaft as deep as I could, gagging myself on his cock as I forced it into my mouth hole. Finally, he began to pump his load into me, spraying his seed down my throat. The hot, sticky cum hit the back of my throat in steady succession, eliciting gags from my body as I took his cum.
Finally, as he finished, I pulled off his cock, gasping and a little dizzy—both from lack of oxygen and from having been on my knees in the back of a moving car.
“That wasn’t bad. Not bad at all.”
“Not bad?” I asked, raising an eyebrow, cum still leaking out of my mouth.
The partition rolled down suddenly.
“Mr. Birch, we’re here, sir.”
“Excellent, James. Well-driven.”
“Cash,” I growled, glaring at him. “Now.”
“Well, unfortunately, I don’t have any cash on me…” Birch said with mock disappointment. He went into what seemed like some sort of mini-bar cabinet built into the woodwork of the limousine’s interior.
“All I’ve got… Is this.”
He revealed the contents of the cabinet: a Tiffany’s necklace. With a diamond. A big fucking diamond.
“Holy shit,” I gasped. He fastened it around my neck and I almost burst out laughing. It looked positively ridiculous against my ratty old sweatshirt. There was no way I could wear something so nice. I immediately took it off and slid it into my pocket.
“And there’s more where that came from—of course.”
“Of course,” I said with an eye roll.
“James will take you home. Since you so kindly called and left me a message, I have your number—so I’ll call you when I need you again.”
“Fine,” I said with a sigh. “Call whenever. I’m a free agent now, I guess.”
And with that, Birch blew me a kiss and, having zipped up his pants and re-fastened his belt, piled out of the limo.
Paris
I didn’t hear from David Birch until next Friday. That morning, as I was coming home from the gym, my phone rang and when I glanced down, Birch’s name was blinking.
Yes, I had entered him as one of my contacts. I felt like I owed it to him, after the necklace—if nothing else.
Answering him was one of the hardest things I had ever done but the fact was, I kn
ew not answering him would be even harder. I knew what I had to do.
In fact… I knew what I wanted to do.
“Hel… Hello?” I answered nervously, biting my lip without realizing it.
“Latoya. What are you doing this weekend?”
His voice was cool, calm, collected.
“I… I don’t know… Studying…” I replied lamely.
“No new clients?”
In fact, I hadn’t managed to get any. I made a few half hearted attempt on craigslist to lure in new clients but it hadn’t gone anywhere. Instead of clients willing to pay my hefty hourly fee (at four-hundred dollars an hour, with a three hour minimum, I was anything but cheap), all I got were spam bots demanding that I sign up for scam sites which promised to divert hundreds of viewers an hour to my cam girl site. No thanks.
Ladies Prefer Champagne Alpha Male Romance Mega Bundle Page 43