by Amy Brent
“No… I mean… yes… this is what I want,” I said.
Genevieve asked once more. “Are you’re sure?”
“Yes,” I said, giving her a definite nod, even though the sharp teeth of doubt were already biting at my soul. “I’m sure.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Cassandra
The moment I opened the door I recognized the woman standing there as Genevieve St. Claire; Paradiso cofounder and world-renowned sexologist who had penned the online article I’d read about Yoni Massage.
The picture that I’d seen online did not do her justice. She was tall and thin, beautiful, elegantly dressed in a designer pants suit and silk blouse, adorned with diamonds and pearls that probably cost more than I made in a year as an attorney. She gave me a polite smile and stuck out her hand for me to shake. Even in the California summer heat, her hand was cold as ice.
“Miss Casey, I’m Genevieve St. Claire,” she said in a French accent that only served to make her more regal. “May we speak?”
I blinked at her for a moment, then let go of her hand and stepped aside to let her in. “Yes, I’m sorry, please, come in.”
I closed the door and followed her into the suite and offered her a seat on the sofa, which she politely refused. I forced a smile and said, “I’m sorry, you just surprised me. I didn’t expect to meet—“
“I don’t mean to be rude, Miss Casey,” she said, holding up her hands to cut me off. “And I regret the need to be blunt, but time is of the essence. We have a problem that only you can resolve.”
“Me?” The smile faded under the weight of a frown. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
“You were chosen to be The One last night,” she said, narrowing her blue eyes until they burned into mine like tiny laser beams.
“Yes… I… I’m sorry, what is this about?”
“You’re being used, Miss Casey,” she said flatly in perfect English. “And I’m concerned how that will affect the rest of our guests and the reputation of Paradiso. And the credibility of Devin himself.”
The little hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Bad news was ahead. The lawyer in me could feel it coming from a mile away. I set my jaw and gave her a nod. “Please, be as blunt as you need to be, Miss St. Claire. I assure you I can take it.”
“I’m afraid Devin McMasters is… well… let’s just say he is going through some personal issues that seem to be blurring his sensibilities. The last few sessions he has chosen one woman—The One—to focus his attention and energy on, to the detriment of his other guests. The One is chosen to be a symbol to the other women, to formally start the festivities of the weekend.”
“Like a virgin sacrifice,” I said snidely. She gave me a blank expression. I held up my hands. “I’m sorry, please, go on.”
“Yes, well, The One should receive a Yoni Massage and be sent on her way. Lately, however, Devin has chosen to have sex with the woman, which is strictly forbidden, and he ignores everyone else the rest of the weekend. Come Monday, the woman who thought she truly might be the one for Devin ends up with her heart broken and self-respect in pieces. Because once the weekend is over, Miss Casey, Devin will never speak to her—to you—again.”
“You said it was a problem only I could resolve.”
“Yes, I’m afraid that’s the case.”
I sat on the edge of the bed with my hands clasped in my lap, listening to her words but not wanting to hear them. If she was lying she was doing a damn good job of it. I could usually spot a lie even as it left someone’s lips. Her body language was solid, unflinching. Her tone without waver. She was telling the truth. And it explained a lot. Devin didn’t realize we had history when he chose me to be The One. He was already touching me sexually before I realized who he was. Son of a bitch. There was no real connection there. It was all about sex. Just sex. The time we spent together before, whatever memory was made, whatever connection I might have felt, was just smoke and mirrors to the great Devin McMasters.
“What should I do?” I asked quietly, swiping a knuckle under my eyes.
“You have to leave, my dear,” she said firmly. She put a hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “I have a car waiting for you at the side entrance that will ferry you home. And if you are the self-respecting young woman that I believe you to be, you will never speak to Devin McMasters again. I am sincerely sorry that he used you in such a horrid manner. I can only hope that you received some satisfaction from his actions, however ill-intentioned they turned out to be.”
“Yes, thank you, I understand… I’ll pack right away.”
She gave my shoulder another squeeze, then started for the door. With her hand on the knob, she turned back to say, “I will try to get Devin the help he needs, Miss Casey. I’m afraid it’s up to you to help yourself.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: Cassandra
“What the fuck, Cass?”
“Hello to you, too,” I said, stepping aside so Lulu could storm into my apartment like the Tasmanian Devil. It was almost midnight, Monday night, and I assumed she had come to my place straight from her weekend at Paradiso. I should have felt bad about leaving without letting her know what had happened. I had left her a note that I had to rush back to the city and would see her back at the office on Tuesday. Because Paradiso had no cell service, she couldn’t contact me to find out what the hell was going on.
I closed the door and followed her into the kitchen. She was still wearing a t-shirt and khaki shorts and flip flops. Her hair was up in a messy ponytail and her skin had a healthy glow, although the redness of her cheeks was more from anxiety than a seaweed facial. She plucked a beer from the fridge and leaned back against the sink to pop the top and glare at me.
“Where the fuck did you go?” she asked, sloshing beer over her hand. “What the fuck happened?”
I slid onto a stool across the kitchen island and let go a long breath. “Things just got out of hand,” I said. “It was best that I leave.”
She wrinkled her nose at me from over the beer can. “What happened? What got out of hand? Why did you leave?”
For the next hour, I told her about Genevieve St. Claire’s visit to my room and everything she said about Devin. Lulu listened quietly, grunted here and there, and shook her head. By the time I finished, I found myself wiping tears from my eyes. Yes, there were tears. Of anger and sorrow. I felt betrayed. Used. Sad. Regretful. And I still wanted Devin McMasters in my arms, even if he was a deviant pussy hound.
“Wow, that makes sense I guess,” Lulu said. “Devin came looking for you on Saturday night. I told him you had to rush home because of some emergency. I showed him the note. He didn’t say anything. He just gave me a weird look, but I got the feeling that under the surface, he was seething, really mad at someone.”
“Yeah, I guess he expected me to be waiting for him to finish rubbing other women’s pussies so he could then come rub his stink on mine.”
Lulu giggled. “Wow, so different from the googly-eyed girl I had breakfast with on Saturday morning.”
“Well, that googly-eyed girl was a fucking fool,” I said seriously. “I left her at Paradiso. Trust me, this girl,” I patted my chest, “will never again give Devin McMasters the time of day.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Devin
“Devin? Devin? Dude, are you listening to me?” Ben was standing at the white board in the Paradiso conference room with a red marker in his hand and a frustrated look on his face. He had been scratching out ideas on the board with Amy and Beth, two girls from our marketing department who handled our social media campaigns.
Personally, I don’t know Facebook from Facetime, so I let Ben handle all that stuff. The only reason I was in the room was that he had been trying to get me more involved in the day-to-day operations since I said I wanted to leave.
Now that Cassandra Casey was out of the picture—she hadn’t answered my calls in two weeks—the talk of leaving had fell by the wayside. I no longer had a reason to leave. Or a reason to do much of any
thing else.
“I’m sorry,” I said, rubbing my hands over my eyes. I stared at the whiteboard through my fingers. “Yes, whatever, that looks great.”
Ben took a deep breath and put the cap back on the marker. He worked up a smile for the girls and said they could go on about their day. He followed them to the door, then closed the door behind them.
“Okay, what’s going on?” he asked, slumping in a chair across the table from me. “You’ve been dragging around here for the last two weeks like a man who’s lost his best friend.”
“I’m staring at my best friend,” I said.
Ben sighed. “That’s what I mean. You don’t treat me like your best friend anymore. Hell, you don’t treat anyone like a friend. You don’t even speak to anyone. You just lock yourself in your villa and only come out when I drag you out.” He shook his head and gave me a desperate look. “Jesus, Dev, we have a new session starting in a week. You’ve got to pull yourself together.”
“I’m fine,” I said, even though my tone hinted otherwise. I sounded far more pissed off than fine. With a dash of self-loathing and self-pity thrown in for good measure. “Look, don’t worry about me. I’ll show up, I’ll do what’s expected, and everyone will go home happy. May the cash registers continue to ring.”
He studied my face for a moment, as if he might find the truth tattooed there. He leaned his elbows on the table and cocked his head to one side. “This is about that woman,” he said. He picked up a blue marker and tapped it to his forehead. “Cassandra Casey. You’ve been moping around like a little kid ever since she left.”
“Leave her out of it, Ben,” I said. “She left, so whatever I thought we might have had together was just my mistake. She was a good fuck. Let’s leave it at that.”
Ben rolled the marker between his palms and watched it spin. “You really liked her, huh.”
I blew out a long breath and leaned my head back on the chair’s headrest to stare at the ceiling. “Yeah, Ben, I really liked her. She made me… feel…”
The marker went still. I could feel him staring at me. “What, Dev? She made you feel what?”
“She made me feel,” I said, my voice cracking a bit, like a kid hitting the first screech of puberty. “That’s it. And I haven’t felt anything in a very long time.” I suddenly felt tears stinging my eyes. I’m not one to cry—I dislocated my shoulder during a high school football game and didn’t miss a play—so it was a bit of a shock to me and Ben when the tears came. He had never seen me cry, not even close. I didn’t blubber or anything like that. I just had tears streaming down my cheeks. I wiped the tears away and sniffed back the snot that came with them.
“Dude, are you… crying?” Ben asked.
“No, motherfucker, I’m leaking,” I said, pressing my palms to my eyes.
“Shit, Dev, I had no idea you felt that way about her,” Ben said, stammering out the words. “I mean, I never would have agreed to… I mean... holy shit…”
I rolled my head to the side to look at him. I could tell he had something on his mind, something he wanted to say but wasn’t sure he should. I swiveled toward the table and held out my hands. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re not going to be happy,” he said with a heavy sigh, his head swiveling from side to side. He rubbed his hands over his cheeks, then looked me in the eye. “Okay, look… I know why Cassandra Casey left.”
“You do?” I laced my fingers together and squeezed until my knuckles were white. The tears were gone, burned from my eyes by the anger I felt smoldering in my brain. “Why did she leave, Ben? What did you do?”
“It wasn’t me,” he said quietly, hands out, finger wagging. “I didn’t know she was going to do it, Dev, I swear.”
“Ben… don’t make me come over this table after you,” I growled. “Tell me what the fuck did Genevieve do?”
He took a deep breath and confessed it all.
I had never been so angry—or so relieved—in my entire life.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: Cassandra
My assistant, Wendy, tapped lightly on the door and stuck her head in to get my attention. I was working on a motion to put before the judge the next day, the Candy Sweet divorce case preliminary depositions, which hopefully would let me get her piece of crap husband in a room under oath so I could burn the bastard at the stake. Actually, I wanted to just shove the stake up his fat ass and then set him on fire…
The poor guy, it was just bad timing on his part and bad luck for us all that he had entered my world during another of my “I hate every fucking man alive” periods, thanks to Devin McMasters. I couldn’t wait to make Roger Sweet pay through the nose for what Devin had done to me.
I imagined Lulu’s voice in my head as she recited one of her favorite sayings, “Men… They all suck… So fuck ‘em and hang ‘em high… And if they’re already hung, then fuck ‘em and let ‘em go…”
That Lulu.
She was a regular Mark Twain.
Or Mark Twat.
I glanced up with my eyebrows cocked because Wendy knew better than to bother me when I was trying to focus on work. And focusing was hard to do these days, again, thanks to the aforementioned Mr. McMasters.
No matter how hard I tried I could not get him out of my mind. Every time I closed my eyes I felt his hands on my breasts, his lips sucking my tongue, his fingers squeezing my nipples, his cock buried between my legs. I’d woken myself up every night for two weeks, soiling another pair of panties in my sleep. I had started sleeping with a maxipad between my legs just to soak up my nightly mess. Damn him. And damn me for falling for his line of bullshit.
Yoni Massage my ass… I mean… fuck it… you know what I mean.
“Yes, Wendy?”
She nodded toward the hallway behind her and said, “Cass, there’s a Mr. Chin here to see you.”
“Mr. Chin?” I wrinkled my nose at the name as my brain tried to put a face to it. “Do I know a Mr. Chin?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “He seems to know you.”
What’s it about?”
“He said it was about Paradiso?” She had one of those California accents that made every statement end in a question mark. She came over to the desk and handed me an embossed business card. BEN CHIN, DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS, PARADISO RESORT & SPA. I stared at the card for a moment, wondering what the hell that Ben Chin was doing at my office.
Wendy hitched a thumb over her shoulder. “Should I show him in or ask him to make an appointment?”
I sighed and pushed away from the desk. “I could use a break. Show him in.”
“Miss Casey, so nice of you to see me without an appointment,” he said as Wendy ushered him into the office and closed the door on her way out. It took a moment for me to recognize him without his billowy white shirt and white linen slacks. He was dressed smartly in a dark blue blazer over a black shirt and expensive jeans that were made to look ragged and old. He stuck out his hand and put on a smile. I got the feeling that he wasn’t out surveying former guests for feedback from their time at Paradiso. If so, I could have really filled his ear.
“Nice to see you again, Mr. Chin,” I said, directing him to one of the two red leather chairs that sat in front of my desk. “Would you like something to drink? Coffee, tea, soft drink?”
“No, thanks, I’m fine,” he said as he sat down and crossed his legs and laced his fingers around one knee. He was wearing Gucci loafers and no socks. I hated men who wore loafers without socks. They reminded me of an old boyfriend I had in law school who bragged that he didn’t own a pair of socks or underwear (we did not date for long). Regardless of how expensive the loafer is, their feet still smell like shit at the end of the day.
Ben had a nervous look in his dark eyes. For a moment, I wondered if he was there to see if I was going to file some sort of lawsuit against Paradiso. I could have probably pushed a sexual harassment suit to a nice settlement, but that would have been making money on a lie, which was not something I liked doing, a
lthough most of my clients had no problem accepting such a check. He didn’t have to worry. I didn’t need his money. And even if I did I would not go through the public embarrassment of suing an innocent man for accepting the invitation to put his cock inside me.
I sat behind the desk with my hands together in front of me and gave him a curious smile. “So, Mr. Chin, to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit.”
“Please, it’s Ben.”
“Okay, Ben. To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”
He licked his lips and seemed to take a moment to gather his thoughts, as if he were choosing his words carefully. I had only met Ben Chin once, and talked to him very briefly twice, so I didn’t really know the man from Adam. I had the sinking suspicion that Lulu had slept with him at least once, but that simply made him part of a very large, nondescript group. After a moment of awkward silence, he cleared his throat and gave me what looked like the most serious face he could muster.
“I’m afraid you’ve been lied to, Miss Casey,” he said quietly, formally. “And I am here to set the record straight.”
I wondered if Ben Chin had studied law in college, because he was certainly acting like a shady lawyer who was about to have the truth squeezed out of him. I leaned back in the chair so as not to appear too much on the offense, and spread out my hands the way I’d seen so many judges do. “Please, sir, enlighten me.”