by Nikki Sloane
chapter
ONE
My best friend Payton and I were celebrating her best month yet at her job, where she’d pulled in forty thousand dollars, more than I’d make all year after taxes. Actually, she’d made it in a handful of nights, and she’d made it selling her body to men. Payton was a bonafide high-class whore.
“I’m providing a service,” she joked. “The ugly and fat guys can fuck a girl who looks like me.”
She was a hooker with a heart of gold, as in gold-digger, and had chosen this ‘career’ even though she held a degree in communications from Northwestern. She’d chosen it. There was no need or goal that had forced her into the position, although I often wondered if there was an emotional one she was desperate to satisfy.
We’d been randomly assigned roommates for the semester of college we studied abroad in Amsterdam. I’d selected it because attending school abroad looked great on a résumé, and she’d gone because, I suspect, she was bored. It was in the red-light district that spring when she discovered her exhibitionist streak. The entire dorm floor of Americans decided to go together to a sex show, mostly as a joke, and the host running the show had gawked at my gorgeous roommate.
My mouth fell open when the performers invited Payton to join them and I’d watched in fascinated horror as she made her way triumphant to the stage. She hadn’t participated in the actual sex that night, but had no problem showing off the creamy skin of her breasts or touching both of the performers anywhere and everywhere.
It made me uncomfortable, but if I’m being honest, also envious. Not so much of the performance, but her total lack of inhibitions during, and absence of shame afterward. Confidence oozed out of every cell of her. She was attractive, but her unapologetic personality made her insanely hot. Even though I’m straight, I had a girl-crush on her.
We stood now in one of the quieter corners of her favorite spot, a trendy bar where no drink was less than twelve dollars and which was also overrun with assholes looking to get laid.
“These are from the gentlemen over there,” the thin-as-a-soda-straw waitress said, passing us drinks and gesturing to the other end of the bar. Usually the assholes traveled in pairs, and the less attractive of the two would try to make conversation with me while the other did his best to land Payton. She was tall and slender with vibrant blue eyes, and I was the poor man’s version. I had mousy brown hair to her glossy, black cherry locks. My curves were my thighs, whereas hers were located up top for maximum appeal. My face was plain and unremarkable, and hers was exotic.
“I think you should do it,” Payton said.
“Do what?” I asked. The pair of suits had noticed we’d accepted their drinks and now were making their approach.
“Come with me next time. Give it a try.” This was at least the third time she’d suggested it.
“No way. Have you not met me?”
She gave me a knowing smile.
“I’m Todd,” the guy said before he’d even reached us. He couldn’t have looked more cliché douche if he’d tried. “This is my friend John.”
How fitting. The quiet one locked eyes with me for a moment, and then seemed to struggle with the urge to look around for better options.
“Thanks for these,” Payton said. “We were thirsty. I’m Payton and this is Evie, and I was just telling her to consider joining me next time I’m seeing clients.”
“You two work together?” Todd asked. He smelled like he’d been standing too close to a cologne factory when it had exploded.
“No,” she continued, “but I think she’d like it.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m an escort.”
Todd blinked, stunned. Then, a smile widened on his face and gave us a look at his too-white teeth.
“Oh, yeah? Me too. What kind of benefits do you get? Dental? Vision?”
“No need for the vision, I wear a blindfold during. Both my clients and I like our anonymity.”
“Of course,” he said, seeming to want to play along. “So, Evie, are you—”
“That’s my bad,” Payton interrupted. “You don’t actually get to call her that, only friends and family do. Her name is Evelyn.”
Her sweet, oddly possessive streak over my nickname had developed after we’d graduated and my first great love had dumped me. His loser friends knew me by the nickname, and after a disastrous run-in with them post-breakup at the Taste of Chicago, she decreed the name from now on had to be earned.
“Evelyn, got it,” Todd said, pushing the cocktail straw to the side so he could take a sip of his drink. “Are you going to become an escort like your friend and I here?”
My face flooded with heat at the thought of it. “No, I couldn’t.”
“Would you pay money to sleep with her?” Payton asked.
Todd gave me an evaluating look that made me feel more like a piece of meat than I ever had at this bar.
“I don’t know, maybe,” he said, indifferent, “I don’t usually pay for sex.” Usually, my brain noted, which implied he had.
“It’s not just sex.” Payton set a hand on Todd’s arm and drew him closer to her. “It’s an experience. You’re buying the opportunity to be in complete control, to do whatever. Even the dark, twisted fantasy you’ve been secretly wanting to try.”
“Yeah?” He tried miserably not to look too excited, but the thought of doing whatever sick idea he had to Payton was too much. “You’re into the hardcore stuff?”
“Absolutely. But Evie’s not a freak like me.” Her blue eyes went to the other guy, who was focused on me. “What about you? Would you pay to do whatever you wanted to her?”
“Don’t use me in your recruiting material,” I said. I’m not sure why I cared, but a small part of me waited to hear the answer on whether or not this random stranger would pay for the privilege to have total command over my body.
“Well, she’s hot and all, but I’m not into the weird stuff,” he answered. My heart beat just a little faster with his flattery.
“He’s vanilla, plus he’s broke,” Todd added.
“Wow,” Payton said. “Sounds like our friends have a lot in common.”
I was broke, thanks to huge student loans which, coupled with rent in downtown Chicago and utilities, left me with virtually nothing. I don’t know if I’d say I was strictly into vanilla sex, though. I was by no means a prude, but by comparison to Payton, I was a nun.
“Wait, how does it work?” Todd asked. “If you’re blindfolded, how do you make arrangements?”
“The club handles that.”
The smile faded from Todd’s face a little, like he was worried she was actually serious. “What club?”
“The private club I work for.” She finished her drink and pulled a business card and pen from her purse, and then handed her bag to me. “Turn around.”
I did so and finished my drink, knowing we were about to make our exit. She set the business card on my shoulder and scribbled a word on it.
“If you’re interested in learning more,” Payton said, and handed the card to Todd, “go to this website. The password on the back is good until Sunday at midnight.”
“What?”
“Thanks for the drinks,” she replied, taking back her purse and dragging me away. Leaving them wanting more was her specialty, but the two men standing there looked more confused and disappointed than anything else.
The rest of the team waited for our boss to arrive and begin the Monday meeting, idle chitchat about the fading summer weather filling the silence. Logan Stone was now eleven minutes late to the meeting he had called.
“Should we give him five more minutes?” Kathleen, one of th
e senior designers, asked. I would have preferred to leave now. The order for my first major account had come back from the printers, and the finished sample was waiting for me in a FedEx box on my desk. Seeing your design work in a finished piece was deeply satisfying, and I had a bit of Christmas morning anticipation about it.
He came in with no excuse or apology, and gave us barely a greeting. It made me wonder if this was a deliberate tactic to let us all know how little he thought of our time, or to make sure we knew where we stood.
Logan had been a senior designer when I started, and last year he beat out two other senior designers to take over as department manager. The power had gone straight to his head. He’d had difficulty accepting client feedback before the promotion, and now he was a nightmare. Negative feedback was met with what I like to call “education” lectures, where he’d spew all the design reasons for the decisions he’d made in the artwork. It was impossible to argue with him.
He always got his way, and the worst part was he was usually right.
Logan’s tie was askew like it had been thrown on in a hurry. Maybe his lunchtime quickie had run over. He was attractive with short, perfectly styled brown hair and a trim, lean frame, so it stood to reason he had a girlfriend. Or maybe a fuck-buddy, since his strict personality would make him difficult to date.
He plugged in his laptop and navigated to the critique folder, where the entire department dumped their work-in-progress proofs. It was anonymous to everyone but him and the artist who’d built it, and occasionally it could be brutal. But today he seemed to be in a decent mood, elevating his “Start over” critiques to “Needs work.”
If he was going to be like this from now on, I had no problem with Logan being late to every meeting. After we concluded, I packed up my things and overheard his discussion with another coworker about his weekend. He’d run a half-marathon on Saturday and finished at the top of the 30-34 year old division, but it had come at a price.
He’d been late to the meeting because his muscles were tight and sore, and he’d gone to get a massage. Today, in the middle of the workday. If I was Payton, I would have told him how ridiculous that sounded, but because I was me, and because he couldn’t see, I rolled my eyes and hurried to my desk.
I tore the box open and pulled the case card out, admiring the glossy sheen finish the new clients had splurged on. It seemed silly to be proud of a printed piece of cardboard that advertised a bottle of vodka, but I had worked so hard to marry together the concepts the client wanted. It was eye-catching and stunning. Even Logan had said so in critique, his gaze falling to mine that day in the conference room. I had decided I disliked him a little less then, until he laid into another designer’s piece and had sent her home in tears.
A sensation of alarm trickled through me. Something was wrong. The printer had gotten the colors just right, perfect for the branding I was going for. Was the shadow off? A typo in the tagline? I had proofed it endlessly, surely that wasn’t it. What was it that made my mouth go dry?
My gaze continued downward through the advertisement, down to the bottom, searching . . . That was where I found it, the horrible mistake that would put me out of a job. How the hell had this happened? In a panic I flew to my keyboard and searched through emails, terrified to confirm what I already knew was true.
I stared at the screen for an unknown amount of time in disbelief that I had been so stupid. And then an even longer time trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do. Not only did I need this job, but I loved it. I’d do anything to keep it.
Shaky legs carried me to the doorway of Logan’s office.
“Do you have a second?” My nervous voice drew his eyes up, and he nodded. I held the case card sample in one hand and used the other to shut his door, indicating how serious our conversation was about to be.
“I made a mistake,” I breathed out, clutching the cardboard so hard it started to bend under my grip.
“What did you do?” It wasn’t accusatory, more concerned.
“This is the sample for Player’s.” I set the board in front of him and sank down into the chair opposite his desk. Long fingers picked it up, and his chocolate-colored eyes scrutinized every inch of it. Like me, he couldn’t spot it right away. He searched for a typo in the tag, and when he came up empty, he dropped down to the legal disclaimer at the bottom.
The cardboard dropped silently to the desktop, and his face filled with anger. “How the hell did that happen?”
“Player’s is a new client, so I didn’t have their brand guidelines when I started building. I grabbed a legal off someone else’s artwork to use as a placeholder until I had it. I thought I had updated it, but . . . I didn’t.”
“Of course you grabbed their competitor’s legal line.”
It wasn’t possible for him to be any angrier with me than I was with myself. It didn’t matter that the customer had signed off on the proof I’d sent them. The customer was always right, and there was no way they were going to pay for twenty thousand pieces of advertisement they couldn’t use.
“Call the printer and get estimates on stickers to cover that,” he barked, and ran a hand through his hair.
“I already thought of that, but we can’t.”
He looked closer at the sample. “Shit.”
The legal was positioned just so on the background that the stickers would have to be perfectly placed by hand to hide it. That kind of labor would be too expensive. It’d be cheaper to just print 20,000 new ones. And using the sticker would alert everyone to what a dumbass I’d been, including the brand new client, who’d probably bolt.
“I need to ask,” I said, a tremble in my voice, “for a really big favor.”
It was like I’d just told him I loved the font Comic Sans.
“What do you need?”
What I needed was to fix this mistake and keep my job. Agency jobs were hard to come by, and freelancers were making the design industry more competitive every year. I’d made tough choices before, and I could do it again.
“No one knows about this. I need you to have the printer destroy these before they go out tomorrow.”
“That’s a given, not a favor.”
“I need you to place a rush order for 20,000 more, with the correct legal.”
“I think the customer’s going to notice an extra ten grand on their bill.” His long, elegant face twisted with sarcasm.
“No,” I said, my voice fading into almost nothing, “they won’t, because I’m going to pay for it.”
“What? You’re not going to do that.” Confusion made his eyes a shade darker.
“You and I are the only ones who’ll know.” I hated that he’d be able to hold it over me, but right now I had to focus. I needed his help. “If Player’s finds out, they’ll walk and my head will roll.”
“Maybe that’s what should happen.”
“I’d like to point out that you signed off on the proof, too.” I hadn’t wanted to bring it up, but he’d left me no choice.
“I sign off on dozens of rounds of artwork a day. I don’t proof legals because I expect my people to be able to execute simple things like this.”
I tried not to let it sting, but his truth cut into me. “Your boss might see it otherwise.” As my manager, his job could be in jeopardy for my mistake.
His eyes went narrow. “You’ve got that kind of money?”
“No,” I said, “but . . . I think I can get it.”
“That sounds ominous. How?”
“Don’t worry about it.” Because lord knows, I was plenty worried about it enough for both of us. “Please, Logan. I made a stupid mistake that I’m going to beat myself up over about for the next ten years. I love this job. I need this job. Please.”
He leaned back in his chair, his gaze drifting away from mine and falling down onto the case card.
“If I do this, you better not breathe a word of it to anyone else.”
I wasn’t sure if it was relief or trepidation that filled m
y body. “Of course.”
“Go back to your desk and get me the corrected file. Hurry before I change my mind.” He passed the case card back to me with a pointed look. I scrambled for the door but froze.
“I’ll have to know,” I said, “how much I need to come up with.”
His face was unreadable. “I’ll let you know.”
I couldn’t look at the FedEx box when I returned to my desk. I jammed the sample in the garbage and updated the artwork, then emailed the file name and location to Logan. My phone rang a few minutes later with his extension flashing on screen.
“Ninety-six hundred.” That was all he said before hanging up, and even with that few words I could hear the anger in his voice. Anger that I’d drawn him into this terrible situation.
Yeah, well, the joke’s on you. I’d put myself in a much worse situation.
I was about to become a whore.
chapter
TWO
I followed Payton into the upscale salon, and I was sure I was going to throw up on the marble tile floor inside. We were meeting her manager, Joseph. Her pimp, who, assuming everything went okay with our meeting, would become my pimp.
“Just breathe,” Payton said. She was beyond thrilled when I’d confessed what I needed. She felt bad how I’d come to the decision, but she had absolute certainty that this was the first step on my road to sexual awakening.
It wasn’t a step, this was like being strapped to a rocket.
It seemed odd to meet here, but if Joseph agreed to let me see clients, he would have a say about the way I looked, specifically the downstairs area. Payton had filled me in on what to expect, but Joseph wasn’t what I had expected. He was a thirty-something, elegant man with coat-hanger shoulders and a devilish smile.
“Nice to meet you, Evelyn. I’ve heard many good things.” He shook my hand and then gestured for us to follow him past the wash sinks and into the back. He led us into a room I guessed was used for the waxing, and he sat on the table, assessing me with his gaze.
“I’m sure Payton has told you how this works, but things would be different with you. Your friend is a rare woman, which you probably already know.”